“Know Thyself,
Nothing to Excess,
Surety Brings Ruin”

– inscribed at the Temple of Apollo at Delphi

Many are aware of the Apollo at Delphi inscription and associate it as words of wisdom, after all, the Temple at Delphi was at the center of global intelligence. Kings, emperors, statesmen, generals from all quarters of the ancient world would travel to the Temple with a very generous payment in gold in hopes that the wisdom of the great god Apollo would be bestowed on them and give strength and power to their particular cause.

One of the most famous prophecies made by the Cult of Delphi, according to the ancient historian Herodotus, was to King Croesus of Lydia. King Croesus was a very rich king and the last bastion of the Ionian cities against the increasing Persian power in Anatolia. King Croesus wished to know whether he should continue his military campaign deeper into Persian Empire territory and whether he should seek a military alliance in such a feat.

According to Herodotus, the amount of gold King Croesus delivered was the greatest ever bestowed upon the Temple of Apollo. In return the priestess of Delphi, otherwise known as the Oracle, (some poor young girl selected once a year with the “right attributes”) would spout nonsensical babble, intoxicated by the gas vapours of the chasm she was conveniently placed over. The priests would then “translate” the Oracle’s prophecy.

King Croesus was told as his prophecy-riddle, “If Croesus goes to war he will destroy a great empire.” Croesus was also told to ally himself with the most powerful Greek state, and he chose Sparta. Croesus was overjoyed and thought his victory solid and immediately began working towards building his military campaign against Persia. Long story short, Croesus lost everything and Lydia was taken over by the Persians. The Spartans never showed up.

It turns out the prophecy-riddle was not wrong, but that Croesus mistook which great empire would fall.

There is likely a great deal of truth in this story. And the words inscribed at the Temple of Apollo “Know Thyself, Nothing to Excess, Surety Brings Ruin” becomes more a foreboding to anyone who dares enter such a Temple in search of wisdom and power; those who are “worthy” of the god Apollo will have the wisdom to solve the riddle of their prophecy and will prevail, those unworthy of Apollo’s “good graces” will fail and be ruined.

It’s a nice story, but it is in fact, a brilliant cover for a global intelligence racket.

The Cult of Delphi was indeed the nerve center of military and political intelligence that had no “allegiance” to any state or empire, but rather was able to use intel that they collected with their network of spies, along with intel they were given by those foolish enough to layout their plans (and their gold) to them. The priests of Delphi would then decide thereupon what information needed to be shared with what target to fit their purpose, a “prophecy” that they shaped, like moving pawns on a chessboard.

The question for those who dared visit the Cult of Delphi was thus not so much about having enough wisdom to solve the veiled prophecy, but rather, ‘What kind of pawn are you to the priests of Apollo?’

The Morals and Dogma of the Scottish Rite

Those who seek wisdom and power have tended to also have an interest in the realm of “secret knowledge.” After all, who wouldn’t want a fast track toward their desires? Who wouldn’t want to believe that their destiny is to be rich, privileged and powerful? Who wouldn’t want to believe that they were chosen out of a few to hold special qualities (one could say supernatural) that make them superior to the majority?

The Scottish Rite was formally organized in the U.S. in 1801, as a group of Tory partisans on the losing side of the American Revolution. One of the principal men involved from the very beginning was a British general by the name of Augustine Prevost. Prevost had conquered Charleston, South Carolina, and set up a secret police apparatus there which became the Scottish Rite headquarters, after the British Army left. (1)

The Scottish Rite would come to rule over American Freemasonry during the nineteenth century and Albert Pike is recognised as the source of this success.

In 1859, Pike was elected “Sovereign Grand Commander” of the Scottish Rite’s Southern Jurisdiction. In 1871, “Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry” (the anti-bible of the Rite) was first published by its author Albert Pike, former General of the Confederate Armies during the Civil War.

Why am I bringing this all up when the focus of this paper is on the origins of America’s secret police?

Because the man credited for building the FBI into the massive domestic intelligence apparatus that it is today was J. Edgar Hoover, who happened to be a 33^rd degree mason of the Scottish Rite, which he was “coroneted” in 1955 after 35 years of membership.

Why is this relevant for the purpose of this paper? If one is to understand what constitutes the “Morals and Dogma” of such a membership, to which Hoover entered the inner most circle, it will become clear that not only does the Rite act as an opposing church to Christianity, but that pledging one’s allegiance to this secret society is understood as coming before all else in this material world, including government and country.

For this reason I think it apt to share a few quotes…

Writing about top-down organization, Pike wrote the following in his book Morals and Dogma:

“The Blue [or lower] Degrees are but the outer court … of the Temple. Part of the symbols are displayed there to the Initiate, but he is intentionally misled by false interpretations. It is not intended that he shall understand them, but it is intended that he shall imagine he understands them. Their true explication is reserved for the Adepts, the Princes of Masonry. . . .” [emphasis added]

These are the very same techniques used by the Cult of Delphi with the understanding that the “true explication” of the “symbols” will only be understood by those supposedly worthy of them, i.e. “the Adepts, the Princes of Masonry.”

How does one know if one is a Prince of Masonry? Those who are foolish enough to have complete faith in the magic of the occult will give an honest attempt to understand such symbols, however, the truth of the matter is those who are chosen for their “understanding” and thus moved closer to the inner “sanctum”, are merely chosen for their usefulness as an instrument for “a higher will.” While this person might be a pawn who plays the determining role in a checkmate, they remain, nevertheless, just a pawn.

Pike would also write in his Morals and Dogma:

“Men are but the automata of Providence, and [Providenae] uses the demagogue, the fanatic, and the knave . .. as its tools and instruments to effect that of which they do not dream, and which they imagine themselves commissioned to prevent …”

Here it becomes clear that the majority of mankind are considered by the Rite as instruments of Providence, and that to do the will of such Providence justifies that the Rite treat mankind as such. I will address shortly what sort of providence they are speaking of.

Pike goes on to explain the Rite’s main guide to the universe, as:

‘‘Magic is the science of the ancient magi.. Magic unites in one and the same science, whatsoever Philosophy can possess that is most certain, and Religion of the Infallible and the Eternal. It perfectly … reconciles these two terms… faith and reason … those who accept [magic] as a rule may give their will a sovereign power that will make them the masters of all inferior beings and of all errant spirits; that is to say, will make them the Arbiters and Kings of the World….”

Again, we see the concept that only a select few will be chosen to be able to decipher and use magic, and that thereby justifies their dominion “that will make them masters of all inferior beings…[and] make them the Arbiters and Kings of the World.”

Pike wrote the above quote to instruct “Sublime Princes of the Royal Secret”- gentlemen of the 32nd Degree.

At this point, it is clear that to truly hold this view of oneself, humankind and the “laws of the universe” means that one is in direct conflict with the idea of democracy towards a “government of the people, by the people, for the people.”

Lastly, I will share a quote from 1889 while Pike was in France, expressing his views of God and what is to be considered “the Good”:

“The Masonic religion should be, by all of us initiates of the high degrees, maintained in the purity of the Luciferian Doctrine. If Lucifer were not God, would Adonay (the God of the Christians) whose deeds prove his cruelty, perfidy and hatred of man, barbarism and repulsion to science, would Adonay and his priests calumniate him?

`Yes, Lucifer is God, and unfortunately Adonay is also God. For the eternal law is that there is no light without shade, no beauty without ugliness, no white without black, for the absolute can only exist as two Gods…the true and pure philosophical religion is the belief in Lucifer, the equal of Adonay; but Lucifer, God of Light and God of Good, is struggling for humanity against Adonay, the God of Darkness and Evil.”

This quote, as per historian Anton Chaitkin, is available in French and English in the Albert Pike vertical file at the library of the Scottish Rite Southern Jurisdiction at 1733 16th St. NW, Washington D.C.

In later years, the body of Albert Pike would be interred inside the Washington DC Temple’s walls. A few feet away, they built a complete replication of the office and desk of their second most honored member, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover.

It should also be known that much of the FBI is implicated in the Scottish Rite. For instance, there are certain Washington lodges which have a disproportionately high number of FBI agents in them such as the Alexandria Lodge.

[For more information on this refer to historian Anton Chaitkin’s “Treason in America”.]

The Seat of Government

On Dec. 17, 1906, Teddy Roosevelt promoted his Navy Secretary, Charles J. Bonaparte, to become Attorney General. Bonaparte lost no time and told Congress that the Department of Justice must be given “a force of permanent police… under its control.”

On May 27, 1908, Congress reacted by prohibiting all Executive departments from using Secret Service agents as policemen, including the Justice Department. During this period only the Treasury Department had the authority to use Secret Service men.

To get around this block from Congress, on July 26, 1908, Attorney General Bonaparte, on Teddy Roosevelt’s instructions, ordered the creation of an investigative agency within the Department of Justice; which later became known as the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

It was the start of what would become an unelected oligarchy, in direct opposition to the rule of self-government.

In the midst of this, a 22-year-old J. Edgar Hoover was first recruited, the year was 1917. Just out of law school, he was put in charge of the Department of Justice’s War Emergency Division’s Enemy Alien Bureau, and was quickly immersed in the wildly lawless wartime counterinsurgency of the First Red Scare (1917-1920).

Anton Chaitkin writes of this period in his paper “Hoover’s FBI and Anglo-American Dictatorship”:

“Attorney General Palmer created a General Intelligence (or “Radical”) Division in the Bureau of Investigation, and appointed Hoover its head. Military Intelligence and Hoover’s agents working together as a single secret service now built up a network of civilian vigilante spies, informers and provocateurs.

These auxiliaries were then set loose in the “Palmer Raids,” a war on unions, radicals, civil rights advocates, teachers, and immigrants from November 1919 to January 1920. This initial descent into a police state was, however, deeply opposed by the American population, and sparked popular protests and outrage.”

1. Edgar Hoover was well fitted as Palmer’s deputy, in overseeing the political mass arrests, deportations, lynchings, terror propaganda, and witch-hunts. Hoover would put a Southern White Masonic unit inside the Bureau itself, called the Fidelity Chapter. And insist that his agents refer to the Bureau, and his office, as “The Seat of Government”. (2)

In 1922, Walter Lippmann put forth in his incredibly influential book “Public Opinion,” that a dictatorship was of the utmost necessity to correct the crisis America was now facing, and that it could no longer afford to delude itself with the idea of a Constitutional system. Lippmann argued that the general public was incapable of exercising reasoned judgment. He claimed the people could only think in “stereotypes” such that they are led to believe in “villains and conspiracies.”

Thus, to overcome such “ignorance,” Lippmann declared that the consensus must be generated not by the ill-educated people, but rather “engineered” by an elite class of “experts”, using “propaganda.” This elite class was in turn to guide the national government from within its every department, forming a permanent dictatorship, its governing members appointed, not elected, to serve for life. A “soft” dictatorship so to speak.

When the Great Depression hit (1929-1933), Hoover blamed the general lawlessness on inefficient, corrupt local politicians and police. What was the solution? More power to “the Bureau.”

Presidents Come and Go But One Thing Remains Constant

While campaigning for the Presidency, Franklin Roosevelt installed his close friend Thomas J. Walsh as the 1932 Democratic convention chairman.

Montana Senator Walsh “knew where the bodies were buried” so to speak.

The reason for this was that in 1921, Thomas J. Walsh had led the battle at the Senate hearings on the Justice Department’s illegal practices. During the hearings he confronted Palmer and his deputy Hoover with evidence that they had perpetrated “an orgy of terror, violence and crime against citizens and aliens….”

Walsh remained in the Senate as J. Edgar Hoover’s dedicated enemy.

Franklin Roosevelt won the election on November 8, 1932; he was to take office in March. On February 15, 1933, a low-level Italian Freemason named Giuseppe Zingara shot at President-elect Roosevelt. He missed and ended up killing the Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak instead.

On February 26, Franklin Roosevelt announced his appointment of Senator Thomas J. Walsh as U.S. Attorney General. On March 1, the New York Times reported Walsh’s pledge that “he would re-organize the Department of Justice when he assumes office, probably with an almost completely new personnel.” (3) It is said that Walsh had declared that one of his first acts would be to oust J. Edgar Hoover.

Walsh was found dead the next morning, while on a train to Washington, D.C. for Roosevelt’s March 4 inauguration and his own swearing-in.

Starting in July 1933, a group of American Legion officials paid by J.P. Morgan’s men asked Marine Corps General Smedley Butler to lead a coup d’état against President Roosevelt. When General Butler had gathered enough evidence he went to J. Edgar Hoover for action. Hoover refused to take any action stating that there was no evidence a federal criminal statute had been violated. General Butler had no choice but to broadcast the coup plot to the American people in order to subvert the fascist takeover.

Franklin Roosevelt was entirely aware that the growing power of the federal bureau was a terrible threat, and had rapidly become an abhorrent opposing force to the president’s authority. It is for that reason that Franklin Roosevelt made the decision to centralise U.S. intelligence under his own control, which was to be created and guided by Colonel Donovan under the newly created OSS.

It was no secret that Colonel Donovan and J. Edgar Hoover were entirely opposed to each other. In fact, Donovan was up there with Martin Luther King, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Robert Kennedy on Hoover’s most despised list.

Franklin Roosevelt died on April 12^th, 1945. WWII was officially over on Sept 2^nd, 1945. The OSS would be dissolved three weeks later on Sept 20^th, 1945. The CIA was “officially” created two years later, purged of its FDR patriots. Donovan vied for leadership of the CIA and was denied. Instead Truman assigned him the task of heading a committee studying the country’s fire departments. (For more on this refer to my paper)

Following this the FBI continued to conduct witch hunts through Congressional committees, President Truman, Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, and the young California Congressman Richard M. Nixon.

On November 22^nd, 1963 President Kennedy was brutally murdered in the streets of Dallas, Texas in broad daylight.

On November 29^th, 1963 the Warren Commission was set up to investigate the murder of President Kennedy.

The old Congressman Hale Boggs of Louisiana (an ally of FDR) was a member of that Warren Commission. Boggs became increasingly disturbed by the lack of transparency and rigour exhibited by the Commission and became convinced that many of the documents used to incriminate Oswald were in fact forgeries.

In 1965 Rep. Boggs told New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison that Oswald could not have been the one who killed Kennedy. (4) It was Boggs who encouraged Garrison to begin the only law enforcement prosecution of the President’s murder to this day.

Nixon was inaugurated as President of the United States on Jan 20^th, 1969. Hale Boggs soon after called on Nixon’s Attorney General John Mitchell to have the courage to fire J. Edgar Hoover. (5)

It wasn’t long thereafter that the private airplane carrying Hale Boggs disappeared without a trace.

Jim Garrison was the District Attorney of New Orleans from 1962 to 1973 and was the only one to bring forth a trial concerning the assassination of President Kennedy. In Jim Garrison’s book “On the Trail of the Assassins”, J. Edgar Hoover comes up several times impeding or shutting down investigations into JFK’s murder, in particular concerning the evidence collected by the Dallas Police Department, such as the nitrate test Oswald was given and which exonerated him, proving that he never shot a rifle the day of Nov 22^nd, 1963. However, for reasons only known to the government and its investigators this fact was kept secret for 10 months. (6) It was finally revealed in the Warren Commission report, which inexplicably didn’t change their opinion that Oswald had shot Kennedy.

Another particularly damning incident was concerning the Zapruder film that was in the possession of the FBI and which they had sent a “copy” to the Warren Commission for their investigation. This film was one of the leading piece of evidence used to support the “magic bullet theory” and showcase the direction of the headshot coming from behind, thus verifying that Oswald’s location was adequate for such a shot.

During Garrison’s trial on the Kennedy assassination (1967-1969) he subpoenaed the Zapruder film that for some peculiar reason had been locked up in some vault owned by Life magazine. This was the first time in more than five years that the Zapruder film was made public. It turns out the FBI’s copy that was sent to the Warren Commission had two critical frames reversed to create a false impression that the rifle shot was from  behind.

When Garrison got a hold of the original film it was discovered that the head shot had actually come from the front. In fact, what the whole film showed was that the President had been shot from multiple angles meaning there was more than one gunman. (7)

When the FBI was questioned about how these two critical frames could have been reversed, they answered self-satisfactorily that it must have been a technical glitch…

Today there are those who continue an attempt to discredit the work of Jim Garrison for the crime of challenging the absurd narrative of the Warren Commission. However, anyone who bothers to read the Warren Commission report, would soon discover it to be a mess of contradictions, fallacies and outright fabrications. Not only an absurd sham but ultimately complicit in one of the most disgraceful cover-ups in American history.

When will the American people realise that the biggest threat to American freedom is not from without but from within its very own walls, where it has been prominently residing for the last 112 years…

[In a following article I will be addressing the central role of H.G. Wells and Walter Lippmann in British-American Intelligence which will subsequently be followed by an expose on the role of CIA Godfather Allen Dulles and the real reason Americans were manipulated into entering the Vietnam War.]

The author can be contacted at cynthiachung@tutanota.com

(1) Anton Chaitkin’s “Treason in America” p. 152-160
(2) Anton Chaitkin’s paper “Hoover’s FBI and Anglo-American Dictatorship”
(3) New York Times, March 1, 1933, p. 2.
(4) Anton Chaitkin’s paper “Hoover’s FBI and Anglo-American Dictatorship”
(5) New York Times, April 6, 1971, “Boggs Demands That Hoover Quit,” p. 1.
(6) Jim Garrison’s “On the Trail of the Assassins” p. 116/(7) For more on this refer to Oliver Stone’s film on the Garrison trial titled “JFK”

When it comes to the crime families of New York, they literally do catch and kill people who can’t be trusted to keep the secrets of their criminal operations. When it comes to the superrich in New York, they’re more inclined to “catch and kill” the story, rather than the accuser. (Jeffrey Epstein’s untimely death last year may be an exception.)

On October 11, 2017, Jim Rutenberg, writing for the New York Times about the aiders and abettors to Harvey Weinstein’s sexual assaults, explained the catch and kill strategy as follows:

“There is also another dynamic at play, involving something akin to a protection racket. This is the network of aggressive public relations flacks and lawyers who guard the secrets of those who employ them and keep their misdeeds out of public view.”

Keeping the secrets out of public view can involve a payoff to the victim and an NDA (non-disclosure agreement) or it can involve a more twisted version: getting a news outlet or Hollywood studio to pay big bucks to buy the story rights from the victim, with the promise to release the story to the public, then killing the story and making sure it doesn’t see the light of day anywhere else. This happens to a far greater extent than Americans currently understand.

The mushrooming transmutations of catch and kill today involve not just public relations flacks, high-priced lawyers, publishers, mainstream media and Hollywood studios. Increasingly, catch and kill includes the U.S. Department of Justice, making this version of catch and kill exponentially more dangerous to American democracy.

We’ll start off with a few of the catch and kill operations that you may have heard something about and then move on to the insidious Wall Street operations that have not, heretofore, been looked upon as catch and kill operations.

Trump’s Woman Problem and the National Enquirer

In December 2018, Donald Trump’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen, was sentenced to 3 years in jail for, among other things, two catch and kill operations that were meant to “influence the 2016 election and did so in coordination with one or more members of the campaign,” according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. The catch and kill plots involved a payment of $150,000 to Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model who alleged an affair with Trump. The payment was made by American Media, Inc. (AMI), the parent of the National Enquirer. AMI bought McDougal’s story, killed it, and then assigned the rights to the story to Cohen’s LLC. In addition, Cohen paid porn star Stormy Daniels $130,000 for her silence about an alleged affair with Trump.

In AMI’s non-prosecution agreement with the Department of Justice, it admitted that its Chairman and CEO at the time, David Pecker, had met with Cohen and hatched a plan to “help deal with negative stories” about Trump’s relationships with women, by “assisting the campaign in identifying such stories so they could be purchased and their publication avoided.” AMI also admitted that in purchasing McDougal’s “limited life rights for $150,000,” it had no intention “to publish the story or disseminate information about it publicly.”

Ronan Farrow and the Harvey Weinstein Investigation

Ronan Farrow has cast a harsh light on NBC, suggesting that it may have been involved in a nuanced form of catch and kill during his investigation of Harvey Weinstein’s alleged sexual assaults on women. NBC failed to broadcast Farrow’s story despite having filmed witness interviews. After NBC told Farrow that his story wasn’t reportable, Farrow took it to the New Yorker, where the article was published and won him a Pulitzer Prize in 2018. That article includes allegations of three rapes by Weinstein.

Farrow appeared on the MSNBC Rachel Maddow program shortly after his article ran in the New Yorker. Farrow was asked by Maddow why NBC did not air the story. Farrow responded:

“I walked into the door at the New Yorker with an explosively reportable piece that should have been public earlier. And immediately, obviously, the New Yorker recognized that and it is not accurate to say that it wasn’t reportable. In fact, there were multiple determinations that it was reportable at NBC.”

Jeffrey Epstein and the U.S. Attorney’s Office

Catch and kill is about the only logical way to view what happened to Jeffrey Epstein at the hands of Alex Acosta, then U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida when Jeffrey Epstein got the sweetheart deal of a lifetime.

In July of 2006, the Palm Beach, Florida Police Chief, Michael Reiter, delivered a deeply investigated case against Epstein to the FBI, according to the November 2018 intrepid reporting of Julie Brown in the Miami Herald. Brown indicated that it took just eight months of FBI interviews for the U.S. Attorney’s office in Florida to have a 53-page Federal indictment ready to file against Epstein involving sexual assaults against dozens of underage girls.

But the indictment was never filed. A deal was worked out by then U.S. Attorney, Alex Acosta, and Epstein’s well-connected lawyers. Federal charges were dropped against Epstein and he was allowed to plead guilty to only Florida state charges: one count of soliciting sex from a minor and one count of soliciting sex from an adult woman. Epstein was able to serve just 13 months in jail while also given a work release program to sit in his well-appointed office 12 hours a day, and driven around by his chauffeured limo. The deal was so outrageously constructed that it even denied his dozens of victims knowledge of the terms of the deal.

Had Julie Brown not conducted that courageous investigation for the Miami Herald, had the Miami Herald declined to publish it, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York would not have been embarrassed into bringing the new charges against Epstein on July 8, 2019. Acosta, who had curiously become Trump’s U.S. Labor Secretary, was embarrassed into resigning as a result of the public uproar.

JPMorgan’s Catch and Kill Deal with the Department of Justice

On November 19, 2013, the Department of Justice and other regulators settled their mortgage securities fraud case against JPMorgan Chase for an unprecedented $13 billion. One year later, we would learn from Matt Taibbi’s reporting at Rolling Stone that the Justice Department had a highly reliable lawyer-whistleblower that had worked at JPMorgan Chase, Alayne Fleischmann, who had documentary evidence that she had warned the bank that it was peddling defective mortgages.

The Statement of Facts offered to the public along with the settlement strongly suggested a catch and kill operation. There were none of the typical smoking gun internal emails; there were none of the internal documents showing an intent to defraud; there were none of the documents that Alayne Fleischmann had provided to Justice Department investigators. And there were no names of employees that had engaged in the fraudulent practices.

Citigroup’s Catch and Kill Deal with the Department of Justice

On July 14, 2014, the Justice Department settled a similar mortgage securities fraud case against Citigroup for $7 billion. Loretta Lynch, then U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said this about the investigation:

“After nearly 50 subpoenas to Citigroup, Trustees, Servicers, Due Diligence providers and their employees, and after collecting nearly 25 million documents relating to every residential mortgage backed security issued or underwritten by Citigroup in 2006 and 2007, our teams found that the misconduct in Citigroup’s deals devastated the nation and the world’s economies, touching everyone.”

But just like a good ole National Enquirer catch and kill operation, those 25 million documents were locked tightly away from public view.

The preposterously skimpy details the Department of Justice released to the public in its 9-page Statement of Facts (SOF) was devoid of anything that could have allowed the public to connect the dots in the fraud. Instead of Appendix 1 being filled with incriminating emails or whistleblower letters proving Citigroup’s intent to defraud, it was a meaningless listing of deal names which told the public absolutely nothing about the nature of the fraud.

Fortunately for America, Citigroup had an internal whistleblower who wasn’t going to wait around for “justice” from the U.S. Department of Justice. Richard Bowen first testified to the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC). According to Bowen’s testimony in FCIC archives, he shared the following with the Commission:

“In June 2006, Bowen discovered that as much as 60% of the loans that Citi was buying were defective. They did not meet Citigroup’s loan guidelines and thus endangered the company—if the borrowers were to default on their loans, the investors could force Citi to buy them back. Bowen told the Commission that he tried to alert top managers at the firm by ‘email, weekly reports, committee presentations, and discussions’; but though they expressed concern, it ‘never translated into any action.’ Instead, he said, ‘there was a considerable push to build volumes, to increase market share.’ ”

The FCIC document also reports that Bowen “finally took his warnings to the highest level he could reach—Robert Rubin, the chairman of the Executive Committee of the Board of Directors and a former U.S. treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, and three other bank officials. He sent Rubin and the others a memo with the words ‘URGENT—READ IMMEDIATELY’ in the subject line. Sharing his concerns, he stressed to top managers that Citi faced billions of dollars in losses if investors were to demand that Citi repurchase the defective loans.”

Richard Bowen went even further, giving his documents and story to 60 Minutes. The program aired on December 4, 2011. It was ironically titled “Prosecuting Wall Street,” a dig at the U.S. Justice Department that was missing in action when it came to prosecuting any Wall Street executive for crimes that led to the financial crash of 2008.

To more fully reflect on what a catch and kill operation looks like when it’s run on behalf of a big Wall Street bank by the Justice Department, versus what a meaningful investigation on behalf of the American people looks like, consider the evidentiary record released to the public by the U.S. Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations when it was Chaired by Democratic Senator Carl Levin in 2013. The investigation probed JPMorgan’s $6.2 billion in losses from its London Whale derivative bets gone bad using bank depositors’ money. The public was presented with a 306-page report, 98 pages of meaningful exhibits including internal emails with names, and two volumes of testimony under oath.

Unfortunately for the American people, that Subcommittee hasn’t conducted any meaningful investigations of Wall Street banks since Republicans took control of the Senate in 2015.

The only element of truth and facts that the American people have today when it comes to Wall Street crime is when a courageous whistleblower comes forward before they are nabbed in a catch and kill operation.

Wall Street on Parade via counterpunch.org

Patrick LAWRENCE

The long, destructive conspiracy theory known as Russiagate, the mother of them all, at last evaporates into thin air. No shred of it remains as of back-to-back disclosures over the past couple of weeks. Where does this leave us? What is to come of this momentous turn of events?

Among those not inclined toward hysteria or copious quaffs of Democratic Party Kool–Aid, it has long been a question how those who concocted and sustained the tales of Russian “meddling,” “collusion,” and mail hackery would manage their embarrassment — not to mention their potential legal liabilities — once their edifice-built-on-sand collapsed, as it was destined from the first to do.

The early signs are as some predicted: They will slither quietly off the stage without comment, they will deny their incessant, ever-vehement accusations, they will profess to weariness, they will insist there are more important things to think about now.

Here is a tweet from one Bob F published Saturday. Our Bob touches nearly all of the above-noted bases. His mentions of Matt Taibbi, Aaron Maté, and Jimmy Dore reference two journalists and a talk-show host who identified the fraud from the first and had the scruples not to surrender to the liberal totalitarianism we have suffered these past three years:

Of course not, and I don’t see this as a Republican-Democrat issue. There were Republicans fully on board with the craziest Russia conspiracy theories, and Democratic candidates like Tulsi Gabbard and Bernie Sanders who became targets of them. https://t.co/GCQ33wcrze

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) May 9, 2020

Yes, Bob, lets. This is a brilliant specimen of the flaccid cowardice we’re now to witness many times over. Reassuringly enough, a modest twitter storm followed. Here is a reply from Kathy Woods, a consistently insightful commentator in Twitterland:

Of course not, and I don’t see this as a Republican-Democrat issue. There were Republicans fully on board with the craziest Russia conspiracy theories, and Democratic candidates like Tulsi Gabbard and Bernie Sanders who became targets of them. https://t.co/GCQ33wcrze

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) May 9, 2020

For good measure, here is another response to Big Bob, this one addressing his implicit assertion of Democratic Party virtue in the Age of Trump:

Of course not, and I don’t see this as a Republican-Democrat issue. There were Republicans fully on board with the craziest Russia conspiracy theories, and Democratic candidates like Tulsi Gabbard and Bernie Sanders who became targets of them. https://t.co/GCQ33wcrze

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) May 9, 2020

Two weeks ago the Justice Department made public documents showing that when, in January 2017, prosecutors wanted to close the collusion case against Michael Flynn, who briefly served as President Donald Trump’s national security advisor, because they found “no derogatory information” against him, Peter Strzok, the philandering F.B.I. agent later found to be shaping an “insurance policy” against a Trump victory in the 2016 election, cajoled them into keeping it open — absence of evidence be damned.

Two Other Developments

The Strzok revelations turned out to be prelude to the two other developments further demolishing the Russiagate narrative. Last Thursday Justice finally dropped its case against Flynn altogether. We now know he was the victim of a perjury trap when questioned about his contacts with Sergey Kislyak, Moscow’s ambassador to Washington in 2016. “Get him to lie so we can prosecute him,” was the FBI’s directive.

Yet worse, Flynn’s guilty plea was in response to prosecutors’ threats to indict his son if he pled otherwise. Tell me the difference, please, between this kind of stuff and the treatment of the accused in the postwar show trials in Eastern Europe.

On the same day the Justice Department dropped the charges against Flynn, the House Intelligence Committee released documents showing that the FBI had no evidence that Russia pilfered the Democratic National Committee’s email archives by hacking into its servers in mid–2016. The FBI had none because CrowdStrike, the patently corrupt cyber-security firm on which it (inexplicably) relied, never gave it any: It had none, either — contrary to its many claims otherwise.

The taker of cake here is that the documents also show that the House Intelligence Committee, chaired by the inimitable (thank goodness) Adam Schiff, knew there were no grounds to allege Russian involvement in what wasn’t a hack by anyone, but a leak, probably by someone with direct access to the DNC’s servers.

My Consortium News colleague Ray McGovern has just detailed the collapse of the “Russians-hacked-it” ruse.

No evidence anywhere along the line of collusion, none of Russians stealing mail. There is a simpler way to put this: No Russiagate.

In truth, there has been evidence aplenty of the Russiagate fraud for some time, due in part to the researches of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, VIPS, of which McGovern is a principal. The problem has been to secure official acknowledgement of three years’ worth of wrongdoing. We now have it, even if it arrives with no admission whatsoever of responsibility.

Enter Perception Management 

(PIxabay)

Now come the lies, the dissembling, and the media’s “perception management.”  Tucker Carlson, the Fox News presenter, offered a funny-but-not-funny catalog of the liars who now stand exposed, none more thoroughly than the egregious Schiff, who ought to resign over this, and Evelyn Farkas, another Obama-era holdover with absolutely no regard for the truth. Loretta Lynch, Obama’s A–G, will also have things to answer for, assuming answers for her misconduct are required of her.

Among the press and broadcasters, it has been a spinfest this past week — led, naturally, by The New York Times, given no one in the media dares venture a syllable for which the Times has not signaled prior approval. The paper’s report on the dismissal of the Flynn case marked the judgment down as “the latest example of Attorney General William P. Barr’s efforts to chisel away at the results of the Russia investigation.” I lost count of the mentions of Flynn’s “lying” and “guilty plea” after nine. No reference to the perjury trap set for Flynn, or the threat to indict his son.

The Times ran two further pieces hatcheting Flynn and Barr in Saturday’s editions, here and here, and a straight-out character assassination of Flynn on Sunday, casting him as some kind of pathological split personality. The Gray Lady doth protest too much, in my view.

The press vastly over-invested in the Russiagate narrative from the first, and now appears set to throw yet more money after all the bad. This is not a good sign. It suggests that our troubled republic simply cannot accept its errors, leaving us unable to learn from them. This is why America in its post-democratic phase cannot self-correct. It is why we have no assurance that another Russiagate, in whatever form, will not be visited upon us.

“Attorney General William P. Barr’s efforts to chisel away at the results of the Russia investigation”? Absolutely. We have to hope he gets somewhere. Committed Russiagaters now take to charging that Barr is corrupting an otherwise snow-white Justice Department. Say what? Given all we now know, this starts to tip into the zone of black humor.

Barr and his investigators are fully armed as of last week. They have all they need to get to the bottom of this dark ocean. They have it in their power to bring to justice the three architects of the Russiagate scam when it was in motion — ex–C.I.A. Director John Brennan, ex–Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, ex–F.B.I. Director James Comey — for what amounted to an attempt to depose a president in a bloodless coup. These are the Democratic Party’s answer to former President Richard Nixon’s infamous “plumbers,” if you ask me.

Whether Barr and his investigators get the task done is to a great extent a matter of politics and bureaucratic warfare that will at best be partially visible to us in coming months. It is a question of how far he will be permitted to go.

Succeed or fail, the record is at least and at last straight.

consortiumnews.com

You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you can’t fool all the people all the time. So said Abraham Lincoln – maybe. But whoever it was forgot to mention an important corollary: fun as it may be to pull the wool over people’s eyes, you’ll writhe in agony for an equal period once the truth emerges and the fraud is exposed.

This is the significance of Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s devastating report on the FBI investigation of Russiagate suspect Carter Page.

For years, the FBI and its allies in the Democratic Party have had a grand time pillorying Page as the centerpiece of a gigantic Kremlin conspiracy to help Trump win the White House and bend America to its will. Thousands of headlines about this or that bombshell revelation, scores of talking heads proclaiming that “the walls are closing in” – it was all so much fun that revelers barely paused when Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller’s announced last March that he was unable to “establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government.”

Sure, a few Democrats perked up. But they quickly decided that even though Mueller didn’t come up with enough evidence to prove collusion, that didn’t mean that he came up with no evidence at all. So the myth continued unabated.

But payback time is now upon us.  The Horowitz report is not some ordinary rebuke, but an epic assault that has left the FBI reeling. After fawning over the bureau for years, the New York Times tried to salvage a shred of self-respect by declaring that even though it “painted a bleak portrait of the FBI as a dysfunctional agency,” all was not lost because the inspector general uncovered “no evidence that the mistakes were intentional or undertaken out of political bias.”

This was incorrect. Horowitz made it clear in his Dec. 11 appearance before the Senate judiciary committee that while there was “no evidence that the initiation of the investigation was motivated by political bias,” the question gets “murkier” when it comes to subsequent FBI actions like withholding or doctoring evidence. Considering that FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith, the man who allegedly falsified evidence against Page, is a never-Trumper who once texted “viva le resistance,” it’s hard to see how bias could not have been a factor.

The inspector general lists seventeen “significant errors” the bureau made in applying for a secret surveillance warrant. It failed to inform the court that Page had been a CIA informant for years and had been found to have been truthful throughout; that he told an undercover agent that he “literally never met” or “said one word to” Paul Manafort, his alleged co-conspirator, and that Manafort had never responded to any of his emails; that a source for ex-MI6 agent Christopher Steele’s famous “golden showers” dossier was known to be a “boaster” and an “egoist” who may “engage in some embellishment”; and that professional associates of Steele said he “[d]emonstrates lack of self-awareness [and] poor judgment” and “pursued people with political risk but no intelligence value.”

Steele, the man who turned US politics upside down, was a flake in other words while Page was more likely on the up and up. Yet the FBI assumed the opposite. Perhaps the most amazing section in Horowitz’s report concerns a Steele informant who confessed that reports of Trump’s sexual escapades in the Moscow Ritz Carlton were “just talk,” conversations he or she “had with friends over beers,” and statements made in “jest.” Yet the Steele dossier reported them as a real, and a credulous press lapped them all up. Steele’s supposed high-level Kremlin contacts, the source added, were individuals “who may have had access” – and, then again, may not have. Corroboration of Steele’s findings was meanwhile “zero.”

Yet this is the document that the FBI continued using to pursue Page and Trump and convince the public that collusion was genuine.

As devastating as all this is, US Attorney John Durham’s long-awaited report on the origins of Russiagate promises to be broader and even harder-hitting. On Dec. 9, he issued an unusual statement saying that he disagreed with Horowitz’s finding that the FBI was legally warranted in launching an investigation. This implies that maybe – just maybe – he’s come up with evidence that the intelligence agencies concocted the whole episode from the outset as skeptics have long suspected.

If so, the agony of those responsible for the Russiagate fiasco can only intensify while, for the rest of us, the fun has just begun. So lean back and enjoy the show. It going to be a doozy.

Harris is also attractive to Wall Street, but her particular strengths are in Hollywood and Silicon Valley, because she’s a US Senator from California, and because even if she doesn’t win the nomination, they will still need to stay within her good graces, because she’s one of their two US Senators and will be pitching for them there — or else not.

On the other hand, Politico headlined on June 13^th, “California poll: Warren surges to second, Harris falls to fourth”; and, so, Harris won’t likely be able to score even nearly as big in the California money-competion as she has been expecting, and the trend seems therefore to be for Warren to emerge as the female contender, and also as the progressive (even if only on financial issues) contender, for the votes from Democrats. But Sanders still could win California: whereas Warren scored 18%, he scored 17% in the poll.

The likeliest four to win the nomination, therefore, currently seem to be Biden, Buttigieg, Sanders, and Warren. Those are the four contenders from whom the winner will likely be chosen by the time the South Carolina primary becomes decided, on (as tentatively scheduled) 29 February 2020.

Given that neither Sanders nor Warren would likely have sufficient attraction to the big-money people who fund the campaigns, it will probably come down to either Biden or Buttigieg, and I would expect that by the time of late February, Buttigieg will have drawn, to himself, enough of Biden’s supporters, so as to be able to be the leading “moderate” in the contest. He’ll have done this on the basis of little more than promises to the voters, which he won’t keep any more than Obama or Clinton did (or than Biden or Harris would). That’s the ‘middle of the road’ type of politician, the type who keeps his promises only to his biggest donors. That would mean a failed United States, the end of the American dream. Like Obama had told Wall Street’s tycoons right after coming into the White House, when he met secretly with them inside the White House: progressives are just “pitchforks” who want them to be punished, just as Southern White racists during the days of Jim Crow had wanted Blacks to be surrounded and lynched. Obama told them that to pursue them legally would be nothing more than bigotry against the rich, and that he would “protect” them from it — and he did. Here is how I wrote about that, at Strategic Culture, back on 17 June 2018:

—

The Inspector General of the US Department of Justice issued on 13 March 2014 its “Audit of the Department of Justice’s Efforts to Address Mortgage Fraud,” and reported that Obama’s promises to prosecute turned out to be just lies. DOJ didn’t even try; and they lied even about their efforts. The IG found: “DOJ did not uniformly ensure that mortgage fraud was prioritized at a level commensurate with its public statements. For example, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Criminal Investigative Division ranked mortgage fraud as the lowest criminal threat in its lowest crime category. Additionally, we found mortgage fraud to be a low priority, or not [even] listed as a priority, for the FBI Field Offices we visited.” Not just that, but, “Many Assistant United States Attorneys (AUSA) informed us about underreporting and misclassification of mortgage fraud cases.” This was important because, “Capturing such information would allow DOJ to … better evaluate its performance in targeting high-profile offenders.” …

On 27 March 2009, Obama assembled the top executives of the bailed-out financial firms in a secret meeting at the White House, and he assured them that he would cover their backs; he promised them “My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks”. It was never on the White House website; it was leaked out, which is one of the reasons Obama hates leakers (such as Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, and Julian Assange). What the DOJ’s IG indicated was, in effect, that Obama had kept his secret promise to them.

Here is the context in which he had said that (from page 234 of Ron Suskind’s 2011 book, Confidence Men, with boldfacings by me):

“My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks.”

It was an attention grabber, no doubt, especially that carefully chosen last word.

But then Obama’s flat tone turned to one of support, even sympathy. “You guys have an acute public relations problem that’s turning into a political problem,” he said. “And I want to help. But you need to show that you get that this is a crisis and that everyone has to make some sacrifices.” According to one of the participants, he then said, “I’m not out there to go after you. I’m protecting you. But if I’m going to shield you from public and congressional anger, you have to give me something to work with on these issues of compensation.”

No suggestions were forthcoming from the bankers on what they might offer, and the president didn’t seem to be championing any specific proposals. He had none: neither Geithner nor Summers believed compensation controls had any merit.

After a moment, the tension in the room seemed to lift: the bankers realized he was talking about voluntary limits on compensation until the storm of public anger passed. It would be for show.

Obama said “Everyone has to make sacrifices,” but he was talking to people who simply refused to be included in that “everyone.” As the mega-crooks who had been profiting from the crimes that had brought about the global economic collapse, those “sacrifices” should have been life-imprisonments. Only by means of such accountability, would their successors not try anything of the sort that these banksters had done. But such was not to be the case. So, the crimes continued.

Obama kept his word to them. The banksters got off scot-free, and kept their personal hundreds of millions of dollars ‘earned’.

He had been lying to the public, all along. Not only would he not prosecute the banksters, but he would treat them as if the only problem was the “pitchforks,” who were “an acute public relations problem that’s turning into a political problem.” The banksters weren’t a problem, but the public were, and he would protect them from the public. And he thought that the people who wanted them prosecuted were like the KKK who had chased Blacks with pitchforks before lynching. The “pitchforks” were to blame, and he would protect the banksters from those. According to the DOJ, Obama’s Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force (FFETF) was “established by President Barack Obama in November 2009 to wage an aggressive, coordinated and proactive effort to investigate and prosecute financial crimes.” But, according to the Department’s IG, it was all a fraud: a fraud (against the public, for the banksters) that, according to the DOJ, itself had been going on since at least November 2009.

The 13 March 2014 IG’s report continued by pointing out the Obama-appointed Attorney General’s lies, noting that on 9 October 2012, “the FFETF held a press conference to publicize the results of the initiative,” and:

“The Attorney General announced that the initiative resulted in 530 criminal defendants being charged, including 172 executives, in 285 criminal indictments or informations filed in federal courts throughout the United States during the previous 12 months. The Attorney General also announced that 110 federal civil cases were filed against over 150 defendants for losses totaling at least $37 million, and involving more than 15,000 victims. According to statements made at the press conference, these cases involved more than 73,000 homeowner victims and total losses estimated at more than $1 billion.

“Shortly after this press conference, we requested documentation that supported the statistics presented. … Over the following months, we repeatedly asked the Department about its efforts to correct the statistics. … Specifically, the number of criminal defendants charged as part of the initiative was 107, not 530 as originally reported; and the total estimated losses associated with true Distressed Homeowners cases were $95 million, 91 percent less than the $1 billion reported at the October 2012 press conference. …

“Despite being aware of the serious flaws in these statistics since at least November 2012, we found that the Department continued to cite them in mortgage fraud press releases. … According to DOJ officials, the data collected and publicly announced for an earlier FFETF mortgage fraud initiative – Operation Stolen Dreams – also may have contained similar errors.”

Basically, the IG’s report said that the Obama Administration had failed to enforce the Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act of 2009. This bill had been passed overwhelmingly, 92-4 in the Senate, and 338-52 in the House. All of the votes against it came from Republicans. (Perhaps Obama was secretly a Republican). The law sent $165 million to the DOJ to catch the executive fraudsters who had brought down the US economy, and it set up the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, and had been introduced and written by the liberal Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy. President Obama signed it on 20 May 2009. At that early stage in his Presidency, he couldn’t afford to display publicly that he was far to the right of every congressional Democrat, so he signed it.

Already on 15 November 2011, Syracuse University’s TRAC Reports had headlined “Criminal Prosecutions for Financial Institution Fraud Continue to Fall,” and provided a chart showing that whereas such prosecutions had been running at a fairly steady rate until George W. Bush came into office in 2001, they immediately plunged during his Presidency and were continuing that decline under Obama, even after the biggest boom in alleged financial fraud cases since right before the Great Depression. And, then, on 24 September 2013, TRAC Reportsbannered “Slump in FBI White Collar Crime Prosecutions,” and said that “prosecutions of white collar criminals recommended by the FBI are substantially down during the first ten months of Fiscal Year 2013.” This was especially so in the Wall Street area: “In the last year, the judicial District Court recording the largest projected drop in the rate of white collar crime prosecutions — 27.8 percent — was the Southern District of New York (Manhattan).” On 29 July 2015, Syracuse University’s TRAC Reports headlined “Federal White Collar Prosecutions At 20-Year Low,” and linked to their full study, which showed that, whereas in fiscal year 2004-2005, under George W. Bush, “Bank Fraud” had been the #1 most-prosecuted of all ”white collar crime matters,” it was, in the latest fiscal year, 2014-2015, only #3.

These were extremely serious crimes: they crashed the world’s economy in 2008. But there was no White House interest in pursuing them. Instead, the Obama Administration blocked any such prosecutions, or even investigations into specific cases.

So: if these sorts of lies weren’t outright frauds against the American public, then what could possibly be?

But that’s not all of what belongs in the “whopper” or “Big Lie” category from Obama: he lied constantly about Ukraine, and about Syria, and about Russia and about his intentions toward Russia, and about his proposed international-trade treaties: TPP. TTIP, and TISA.

None of these whoppers was included in the listing that the NYT presented in their 14 December 2017 article “Trump’s Lies vs. Obama’s”.

—

How horrifically bad a US President Barack Obama was, wasn’t reported by America’s press. Perhaps this is why the three leading candidates among America’s Democratic Party voters today are Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, and Kamala Harris. Supporters of any of those three are supporting, to become the Party’s nominee, someone who would respond to an economic crash very similarly to the way that Obama did (for the elite crooks, against the public). All three despise the “pitchforks” who want accountability, and each respects only his own mega-donors.

Being satisfied with a US President such as Obama was, is to be satisfied with a Democratic Presidential candidate such as Biden or Buttigieg or Harris is.

The Times article on 16 June 2019 mentioned also that there are other candidates, who currently are scoring lower in the polls, but who would be reaping big money from Wall Street, if only the given candidate had a realistic chance of winning the nomination: such as Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand, Betto O’Rourke, and Michael Bennet. Sanders and Warren could never be supported by the big donors. Such candidates are too progressive to suit any of America’s billionaires, and therefore even if one of them were to win the nomination, that person’s campaign would end up being starved for funds from the few people who control the country. The big donors want only politicians who will keep only the promises that are made privately to the big donors, and not the promises that the candidate makes to the public. The big donors don’t care about the public promises, but only about the private ones, because, in today’s America, those are the only promises that a politician keeps — such as Obama exemplified. He had the slickness that Democratic Party billionaires demand. He’s able to retain his popularity among Democrats even after he had screwed them for eight successive years. They’re looking for another Obama. Pete Buttigieg will likeliest be that person.

The most progressive of all of the candidates, Tulsi Gabbard, hasn’t caught on even amongst progressive voters — she’s currently at less than 2% in the primaries polls — and, consequently, whereas there are plenty of Biden clones among the well-heeled candidates, the only two candidates with any chance of actually winning the nomination and who are even moderately progressive, Sanders and Warren, are being shunned by the people who finance political campaigns. Unless one of those two gets tens of millions of small-dollar donors, the best that we’ll have during 2021-2025 will be either an Obama-Clinton clone, or else the current President, Trump.

There’s no realistic way that the US will have any improvement over Bush and Obama and Clinton and Trump, unless Democratic Party voters refuse to settle for the people who are being backed by the Democratic Party’s billionaires. And it also won’t happen from the Republican Party’s billionaires. The only way it even possibly could  happen is if Democrats choose only a progressive, and won’t any longer settle for merely a liberal (a “moderate” in the Democratic Party) (such as Democratic Party primary voters have done in the recent past, and seem inclined to do now). It would need to be a substantially different electorate.

Just as Republican voters are ignorant of how bad the Bushes and Trump are, Democratic voters are ignorant of how bad the Clintons and Obama are. Each Party’s voters are the fools of that Party’s billionaires, and don’t even know it.

The situation is the same in any ‘democracy’. But no actual democracy is like this.

However, The rottenness of the billionaires’ picks could still end up defeating the billionaires. And here are examples of how:

On June 19th, the Washington Post bannered “Back home in South Bend, Buttigieg faces ‘his nightmare’”, and reported that:

A white police officer had shot and killed a black man early Sunday. Buttigieg canceled several days of campaign events — including an LGBTQ gala in New York — and rushed back to Indiana to “be with the South Bend community,” in the words of a campaign spokesman.

Instead of showcasing But­tigieg’s ability to lead through a crisis, however, the shooting is exposing what has long been considered an Achilles’ heel of his candidacy: his frosty relationship with South Bend’s black residents. …

“How’s he handling it?” said Oliver Davis, the longest-serving black member of the South Bend Common Council. “Well, he talked to the media before the family. He skipped the family vigil, full of black residents. And then he then gave a speech to the police. So, how do you think that went over?”

That speech was to the swearing-in of South Bend’s new police class. It had six members. All of them are white. They are to be the new people policing black neighorhoods in Mayor Buttigieg’s South Bend. How well is Buttigieg likely to perform in the largely Black South Carolina Democratic primary, on or around 29 February 2020?

Also on June 19^th, the New York Times headlined “Joe Biden and Democratic Rivals Exchange Attacks Over His Remarks on Segregationists: Mr. Biden’s fond remarks about dealing with segregationist senators are raising questions about both his political past and his political acumen now in dealing with it.” So: How well is Biden likely to perform in the largely Black South Carolina Democratic primary?

If those two candidates get eliminated on account of their too obviously not turning out to be like Obama but instead more like Hillary Clinton, then, perhaps, Sanders, or Warren, or the female Black, Harris, will come to dominate and possibly to win the nomination. But, if Sanders wins it, then none of the billionaires will be funding the Democratic Presidential campaign. But, if Trump’s campaign gets virtually all of the billionaires’ money, then could that fact alone sink his campaign, by exposing, even to some of Trump’s customary voters, that he doesn’t really represent their interests, after all?

In fact, the United States has, through its history, practiced some of the worse political nepotism on the planet. While not all political dynasties have been malevolent, with some, like the Roosevelts of New York, Kennedys of Massachusetts, Lincolns of Illinois, Browns of California, Gores of Tennessee, Grahams of Florida, and Cuomos of New York being quite beneficial to the people of the United States, the same cannot be said of the Bushes, Tafts, MacArthurs, du Ponts, Wallaces of Alabama, Romneys, Cheneys, and the newcomers, the Trumps. Whereas Abraham and Robert Todd Lincoln, Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt, John and Robert Kennedy, Pat and Jerry Brown, and Mario and Andre Cuomo have generally sought to better the lives of US citizens, George H. W. and George W. Bush, William Howard and Robert Taft, Douglas MacArthur and Douglas MacArthur II, George and Mitt Romney, Dick and Elizabeth Cheney, and, more recently Donald Trump, Ivanka Trump, and Jared Kushner, have been set on reducing the commitment of government to serve the interests of the people.

The rise of malevolent democracies is pervasive in countries around the world. One of the most egregious examples of a kleptocracy is Malaysia, where that nation’s former prime minister, Najib Abdul Razak, is accused of siphoning between $700 million to $1 billion from Malaysia’s sovereign wealth fund, 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB). Najinb and his wife, Rosmah Mansor, were discovered by Malaysian law enforcement authorities of spending 1MDB funds on numerous luxury items, including 1,400 necklaces, 567 handbags, 423 watches, 2,200 rings, 1,600 brooches and 14 tiaras worth some $273 million.

Ex-Malaysian Prime Minister Najib’s stepson, Riza Aziz, was named in a US Justice Department lawsuit for diverting tens of millions in 1MDB funds into films produced by his Hollywood production firm, Red Granite Pictures. Riza’s friend, Low Taek Jho, also known as Jho Low, was the president of the board of advisers of 1MDB and is now wanted by Malaysian, Singaporean, and US authorities for being the central figure in the misappropriation of some $4.5 billion in 1MDB funds.

Najib’s son, Nazifuddin Bin Mohammad Najib, has been under investigation for his directorship of two offshore companies incorporated in the British Virgin Islands – the British Virgin Islands (BVI): Jay Marriot International and PCJ International Venture Limited. The firms were incorporated by the discredited and now-defunct international law firm Mossack Fonseca, which was based in Panama. Donald Trump also used Mossack Fonseca to establish several offshore companies.

Najib is also connected to the corruption of the Trump administration. There are suspicions that some of the $75 million paid by Najib's government to former Republican National Committee deputy finance chairman Elliott Broidy and his wife, Robin Rosenzweig, for their "services" in helping to make a US Justice Department investigation of the 1MDB bribery scandal "go away," ended up in Trump attorney Michael D. Cohen's Essential Consultants LLC shell corporation accounts. Broidy, in a non-disclosure paternity suit agreement hammered out by Cohen with former Playboy Playmate of the Month Shera Bechard, used the pseudonym "David Dennison,” the same pseudonym used by Donald Trump in the Essential Consultants non-disclosure agreement with porn actress Stormy Daniels. Cohen and Broidy served as deputy finance committee co-chairs for the Republican National Committee.

Southeast Asia had not seen such grifting by a political family since Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos and his wife, Imelda, fled the Philippines for Hawaii in 1986. Marcos and his wife had siphoned off $10 billion from the Philippines Treasury during their 21-year kleptocracy. When authorities entered the Malacañang Palace, the presidential residence, they discovered 15 mink coats, 508 gowns, 888 handbags, and up to 7500 pairs of shoes. Imelda’s thousands of shoes became fodder for America’s late-night television comedians. Mrs. Marcos remains a political force in the Philippines. Imelda Marcos is a current congresswoman representing Ilocos Norte province and leads a resurgent Marcos political dynasty that includes her son, former Ilocos Norte governor and senator Ferdinand Marcos, Jr., and daughter and current Ilocos Norte governor Imee Marcos.

In neighboring Indonesia, two daughters and the son of the former dictator, General Suharto, continue to be active in politics, along with the three daughters and the son of Sukarno, the man Suharto overthrew in a 1965 Central Intelligence Agency-inspired military coup d’état. Indonesian political nepotism is somewhat akin to that of India, where the Nehru-Gandhi family continues to dominate the Indian National Congress political party, currently in opposition to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Japan has its own nepotism issues arising from the fact that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is the third generation of his family to serve in national politics. His grandfather, Kan Abe, was a wartime member of the Japanese Diet and his father, Shintaro Abe, was foreign minister in the 1980s. Abe’s mother, Yoko Abe, was the daughter of Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi. In addition, Shinzo Abe’s uncle was Prime Minister Sato Eisaku.

The marriage of Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner created a major nepotistic family in American politics. Both families, in addition to their real estate holdings, also now have joint hooks into the interests of other nepotistic regimes, particularly in Africa, where Kushner’s business interests are linked to mining operations for precious gems and rare-earth minerals by Israeli firms. Kushner’s Israeli business associates are active in Angola, long-dominated by the Dos Santos family; the Compaoré family of Burkina Faso; the Kabila family of the Democratic Republic of Congo; the Nguema family of Equatorial Guinea; the united-through-marriage Sassou-Nguesso and Bongo families of the Republic of Congo and Gabon, respectively; the Kenyatta family of Kenya; the Biyas of Cameroon; the Nujoma family of Namibia; and the Condé family of Guinea. Ivanka has links to the ruling Aliyev family in Azerbaijan and the disgraced Martinelli family of Panama. It is no coincidence that Blackwater mercenary firm founder Erik Prince, the brother of Trump’s Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, is now involved in paramilitary operations in Africa designed to secure rare earth mineral excavation sites.

Brazil’s far-right president Jair Bolsonaro is not only referred to as the “Tropical Trump,” a reference to his racist views and embrace of neo-Nazi causes, but because his administration reflects the same degree of nepotism as Trump’s. Bolsonaro’s three sons, Federal Deputy for Sao Paulo Eduardo Bolsonaro, Senator for Rio de Janeiro Flavio Bolsonaro, and Councillor for Rio de Janeiro Carlos Bolsonaro, all serve as their father’s unofficial advisers, roles not unlike those of Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner in the White House. Bolsonaro, an admirer of wartime Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini, can also take heart in the fact that Mussolini’s granddaughter, Alessandra Mussolini, is a member of the Italian Chamber of Deputies and Member of the European Parliament, where she supports the agenda of the right-wing government of Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte.

The Brazilian situation is mirrored in Chile, where right-wing billionaire president Sebastián Piñera has appointed his older brother, José Piñera, as Minister of Labor and Social Security; his first cousin, Andrés Chadwick, as Minister of Interior and Public Security; and his brother, Pablo Piñera, as ambassador to Argentina.

There are other political dynasties that are in either their second- or third-generations or nascent stages. These include the Assads in Syria, the Barzanis in Iraqi Kurdistan, the Erdogans in Turkey, the Qaddafis in Libya, and the Folloroux-Ouattaras of Ivory Coast. Add to the mix the remaining few absolute monarchies in the world, and international geo-politics is ripe for grifters, charlatans, and scoundrels hiding behind political contrivances.

French Canadian author Danielle Tremblay summed up best the scourge of nepotism: “Despotism favors the despot, nepotism favors the despot's genes.”

The Department of Justice, which had, based on evidence already revealed, actually interfered in the 2016 election more that Moscow could possibly have done, continued in that proud tradition by releasing the indictment three days before President Donald Trump was due to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Helsinki Summit between the two leaders was critically important to anyone interested in preserving the planet Earth as we know it and there was no reason at all to release a non-time sensitive document that was clearly intended to cast a shadow over the proceedings. In fact, the surfacing of the indictment might easily be explained as a deliberate attempt by a politicized Justice Department and Special Counsel Robert Mueller to torpedo President Trump over concerns that he might actually come to some understanding with Putin.

The 30-page long indictment is full of painstaking details about alleged Russian involvement but it makes numerous assertions that the reader is required to accept on faith because there is little or no evidence provided to back up the claims and the claims themselves could be false trails set up by any number of hostile intelligence services to implicate Moscow. From an intelligence officer’s point of view, there are even some significant areas where operational implausibility completely undermines the case being made.

The indictment identifies by name and position the twelve alleged GRU officers who “knowingly and intentionally conspired with each other, and with persons known and unknown to the Grand Jury (collectively the ‘Conspirators’), to gain unauthorized access (to ‘hack’) into the computers of US persons and entities involved in the 2016 US presidential election, steal documents from those computers, and stage releases of the stolen documents to interfere with the 2016 US presidential election.”

All twelve alleged GRU officers are described in detail, together with the cover mechanisms they reportedly used and the targets they pursued. But they are all in Russia and there is virtually no chance that they will be extradited to stand trial in Washington, which was certainly understood when the indictment was prepared. That means the “facts” as stated in the document will never be subjected to the normal judicial review process or discovery that takes place whenever someone is accused of a crime, which in turn means that information contained in the indictment will never be challenged.

The document itself also provides no information on how the Russian officers and their positions were identified, which suggests that it could have been a US hack or agent in place, either run by CIA or NSA, that came up with a list of those individuals connected to GRU cyber operations. That would be information involving sources and methods, codeword protected material beyond Top Secret.

If the GRU list is authentic, it would expose US ability to penetrate that organization, leading to Moscow tightening up security to the detriment of American intelligence. But it might alternatively be suggested that the drafters needed a group of plausible Russians and used a generic list provided by either CIA or NSA to come up with the culprits and then used those identities and the detailed information regarding them to provide credibility to their account. What they did not do, however, is provide the actual evidence connecting the individuals to the “hack/interference” or to connect the same to the Russian government. If the information in the indictment is completely accurate, which may not be the case, there is some suggestion that alleged Moscow linked proxies may have deliberately sought to undermine the campaign of Hillary Clinton to favor Bernie Sanders, but absolutely no evidence that they did anything to help Donald Trump.

Beyond what is or is not contained in the document itself, there is a clear misunderstanding regarding how a sophisticated intelligence organization, which certainly includes the GRU, operates. If there had been a large-scale Kremlin sanctioned plan to disrupt the US election, it would not be run by twelve identifiable GRU officers working with what appears to be only limited cover and resources. If the facts are correct, the activity might have been a routine probing, collecting and selective dissemination of information effort that all intelligence agencies engage in. The United States does so routinely in many countries, interfering in elections worldwide, far more than Russia with its limited resources, and even carrying out regime change.

If the Kremlin’s objective were truly to undermine American democracy, a task that is already being undertaken very ably by the GOP and Democrats, hundreds of officers would be involved, all working under deep cover and operating securely out of dispersed sites. And no one involved would be using computers connected to networks that could be penetrated to enable personal identification or discovery of the ultimate source of the activity. Everyone would be working in alias on stand-alone machines and the transmission of information would be done using cut-outs to break any chain of custody. A cut-out might consist of using thumb drives to transmit information from one computer to another, for example. There would be no sending or receiving of information by channels that could be identified by NSA or CIA and compromised.

So the idea that the United States government identified twelve culprits who were responsible for trying to overthrow American democracy is by any measure ludicrous, if indeed there was a major plan to disrupt the election at all. The indictment is little more than a political document seeking to undermine any effort by Donald Trump to establish rapprochement with Vladimir Putin. It will also serve to give fuel to the Democrats, who are still at a loss to understand what happened to Hillary Clinton, and Republican hawks like John McCain, Lindsay Graham, Jeff Flake and Ben Sasse who persist in seeking to refight the Cold War. As Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin said in their Helsinki press conference, the coming together of the leaders of the world’s two most powerful nuclear armed countries is too important an opportunity to let pass. Cold Warriors in Washington should take note.

For example, among the list of lies that the NYT counts from Obama, is excluded Obama’s having asserted on 20 May 2009, at the signing into law of both the Helping Families Save Their Homes Act and the Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act: “This bill nearly doubles the FBI’s mortgage and financial fraud program, allowing it to better target fraud in hard-hit areas. That’s why it provides the resources necessary for other law enforcement and federal agencies, from the Department of Justice to the SEC to the Secret Service, to pursue these criminals, bring them to justice, and protect hardworking Americans affected most by these crimes. It’s also why it expands DOJ’s authority to prosecute fraud that takes place in many of the private institutions not covered under current federal bank fraud criminal statutes — institutions where more than half of all subprime mortgages came from as recently as four years ago.”

Also not counted, but excluded, by the NYT, as having been an Obama lie, was his 24 January 2012 State of the Union Address assertion: “Tonight, I’m asking my Attorney General to create a special unit of federal prosecutors and leading state attorneys general to expand our investigations into the abusive lending and packaging of risky mortgages that led to the housing crisis. (Applause.) This new unit will hold accountable those who broke the law, speed assistance to homeowners, and help turn the page on an era of recklessness that hurt so many Americans. Now, a return to the American values of fair play and shared responsibility will help protect our people and our economy.”

But both statements were lies. The Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Justice issued on 13 March 2014 its "Audit of the Department of Justice's Efforts to Address Mortgage Fraud," and reported that Obama’s promises to prosecute turned out to be just lies. DOJ didn't even try; and they lied even about their efforts. The IG found: “DOJ did not uniformly ensure that mortgage fraud was prioritized at a level commensurate with its public statements. For example, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Criminal Investigative Division ranked mortgage fraud as the lowest criminal threat in its lowest crime category. Additionally, we found mortgage fraud to be a low priority, or not [even] listed as a priority, for the FBI Field Offices we visited.” Not just that, but, “Many Assistant United States Attorneys (AUSA) informed us about underreporting and misclassification of mortgage fraud cases.” This was important because, “Capturing such information would allow DOJ to … better evaluate its performance in targeting high-profile offenders.”

Privately, Obama, early in his Administration, had told Wall Street executives that he would protect them. That statement, made in private to the leaders of Wall Street, turned out to have been honest. Though he lied often to the public, he never (so far as the available public record has shown) did so in private (except that he lied in private to Vladimir Putin, but neoconservatives such as the NYT’s owners and executives and editors don’t mind that at all — but they also don’t count it, at all). 

On 27 March 2009, Obama assembled the top executives of the bailed-out financial firms in a secret meeting at the White House, and he assured them that he would cover their backs; he promised them "My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks". It was never on the White House website; it was leaked out, which is one of the reasons Obama hates leakers (such as Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, and Julian Assange). What the DOJ's IG indicated was, in effect, that Obama had kept his secret promise to them.

Here is the context in which he had said that (from page 234 of Ron Suskind's 2011 book, Confidence Men, with boldfacings by me):

“My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks.”

It was an attention grabber, no doubt, especially that carefully chosen last word.

But then Obama’s flat tone turned to one of support, even sympathy. “You guys have an acute public relations problem that’s turning into a political problem,” he said. “And I want to help. But you need to show that you get that this is a crisis and that everyone has to make some sacrifices.” According to one of the participants, he then said, “I’m not out there to go after you. I’m protecting you. But if I’m going to shield you from public and congressional anger, you have to give me something to work with on these issues of compensation.”

No suggestions were forthcoming from the bankers on what they might offer, and the president didn’t seem to be championing any specific proposals. He had none: neither Geithner nor Summers believed compensation controls had any merit.

After a moment, the tension in the room seemed to lift: the bankers realized he was talking about voluntary limits on compensation until the storm of public anger passed. It would be for show.

Obama said “Everyone has to make sacrifices,” but he was talking to people who simply refused to be included in that “everyone.” As the mega-crooks who had been profiting from the crimes that had brought about the global economic collapse, those “sacrifices” should have been life-imprisonments. Only by means of such accountability, would their successors not try anything of the sort that these banksters had done. But such was not to be the case. So, the crimes continued.

Obama kept his word to them. The banksters got off scot-free, and kept their personal hundreds of millions of dollars ‘earned’.

He had been lying to the public, all along. Not only would he not prosecute the banksters, but he would treat them as if all they had was “an acute public relations problem that's turning into a political problem.” And he thought that the people who wanted them prosecuted were like the KKK who had chased Blacks with pitchforks before lynching. According to the DOJ, their Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force (FFETF) was “established by President Barack Obama in November 2009 to wage an aggressive, coordinated and proactive effort to investigate and prosecute financial crimes.” But, according to the Department's IG, it was all a fraud: a fraud that, according to the DOJ, itself had been going on since at least November 2009.

The IG's report continued by pointing out the Obama-appointed Attorney General’s lies, noting that on 9 October 2012, “the FFETF held a press conference to publicize the results of the initiative,” and:

“The Attorney General announced that the initiative resulted in 530 criminal defendants being charged, including 172 executives, in 285 criminal indictments or informations filed in federal courts throughout the United States during the previous 12 months. The Attorney General also announced that 110 federal civil cases were filed against over 150 defendants for losses totaling at least $37 million, and involving more than 15,000 victims. According to statements made at the press conference, these cases involved more than 73,000 homeowner victims and total losses estimated at more than $1 billion.

“Shortly after this press conference, we requested documentation that supported the statistics presented. … Over the following months, we repeatedly asked the Department about its efforts to correct the statistics. … Specifically, the number of criminal defendants charged as part of the initiative was 107, not 530 as originally reported; and the total estimated losses associated with true Distressed Homeowners cases were $95 million, 91 percent less than the $1 billion reported at the October 2012 press conference. …

“Despite being aware of the serious flaws in these statistics since at least November 2012, we found that the Department continued to cite them in mortgage fraud press releases. … According to DOJ officials, the data collected and publicly announced for an earlier FFETF mortgage fraud initiative – Operation Stolen Dreams – also may have contained similar errors."

Basically, the IG’s report said that the Obama Administration had failed to enforce the Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act of 2009. This bill had been passed overwhelmingly, 92-4 in the Senate, and 338-52 in the House. All of the votes against it came from Republicans. (Perhaps Obama was secretly a Republican.) The law sent $165 million to the DOJ to catch the executive fraudsters who had brought down the U.S. economy, and it set up the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, and had been introduced and written by the liberal Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy. President Obama signed it on 20 May 2009. At that early stage in his Presidency, he couldn’t afford to display publicly that he was far to the right of every congressional Democrat, so he signed it.

Already on 15 November 2011, Syracuse University's TRAC Reports had headlined "Criminal Prosecutions for Financial Institution Fraud Continue to Fall," and provided a chart showing that whereas such prosecutions had been running at a fairly steady rate until George W. Bush came into office in 2001, they immediately plunged during his Presidency and were continuing that decline under Obama, even after the biggest boom in alleged financial fraud cases since right before the Great Depression. And, then, on 24 September 2013, TRAC Reports bannered "Slump in FBI White Collar Crime Prosecutions," and said that “prosecutions of white collar criminals recommended by the FBI are substantially down during the first ten months of Fiscal Year 2013.” This was especially so in the Wall Street area: “In the last year, the judicial District Court recording the largest projected drop in the rate of white collar crime prosecutions — 27.8 percent — was the Southern District of New York (Manhattan).” On 29 July 2015, Syracuse University’s TRAC Reports headlined “Federal White Collar Prosecutions At 20-Year Low,” and linked to their full study, which showed that, whereas in fiscal year 2004-2005, under George W. Bush, “Bank Fraud” had been the #1 most-prosecuted of all ”white collar crime matters,” it was, in the latest fiscal year, 2014-2015, only #3.

These were extremely serious crimes: they crashed the world’s economy in 2008. But there was no White House interest in pursuing them. Instead, the Obama Administration blocked any such prosecutions, or even investigations into specific cases.

So: if these sorts of lies weren’t outright frauds against the American public, then what could possibly be?

But that’s not all of what belongs in the “whopper” or “Big Lie” category from Obama: he lied constantly about Ukraine, and about Syria, and about Russia and about his intentions toward Russia, and about his proposed international-trade treaties: TPP. TTIP, and TISA. 

None of these whoppers was included in the listing that the NYT presented in their 14 December 2017 article “Trump’s Lies vs. Obama’s”.

I am nonpartisan toward persons and toward political parties, and consider all of America’s Presidents since 1981 (if not since 1968, but with the exception of Carter) to be and have been loathsome people (not even well-intentioned), but ‘news’media such as the New York Times aren’t any more trustworthy (nor more honest) than these Presidents have been, and the pontifications from such ‘news’media (in both their ’news’-reporting and opinion-pieces) are just propaganda, mixtures of truths with lies — and more and more of the public are coming to recognize this disgusting fact, so these media’s pretenses to honesty and trustworthiness are having fewer and fewer believers. But these media claim that fake ‘news’ comes only from their non-mainstream competitors (some of which are actually far more honest than they). Preserving their cartel is crucial to them. And it’s crucial to the people who benefit from this cartel.