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This broad­cast high­lights deals (actual and hypo­thet­i­cal) involv­ing major con­flicts of inter­est on the part of key Bush admin­is­tra­tion play­ers and/or allies. In addi­tion to Sec­re­tary of Defense Don­ald Rumsfeld’s role as a direc­tor of the Swiss-based engi­neer­ing firm that sold North Korea its light-water reac­tors, the pro­gram sets forth Bar­bara Bodine’s sab­o­tag­ing of the late John O’Neill’s inves­ti­ga­tion of Osama bin Laden and Bodine’s sub­se­quent posi­tion as tem­po­rary gov­er­nor of Bagh­dad (a quid pro quo?). A major por­tion of the broad­cast explores a line of inquiry opened in FTR#395. Was a deal cut with Saudi Ara­bia in which the US would use Saudi bases for the Iraq war and the Saudis would gain influ­ence in post-war Iraq? Recent dis­clo­sure of bin Laden fam­ily con­nec­tions with the Bech­tel firm (which will be con­tract­ing for much of the Iraqi recon­struc­tion) and the cos­metic nature of a much-promised Saudi cab­i­net shake-up sug­gest the pos­si­bil­ity that such may be the case. One of the embod­i­ments of the petro-dollar con­nec­tion between the Bush and bin Laden fam­i­lies is the Car­lyle Group. Instru­men­tal in set­ting up the company’s key con­nec­tions was Fred Malek, a close polit­i­cal ally of Richard Nixon and the elder George Bush. The broad­cast also high­lights the role of Karl Rove in expe­dit­ing the sale of Sil­i­con Val­ley Group to a Dutch hold­ing com­pany with strong con­nec­tions to Ger­man com­pa­nies that have dealt with the country’s ene­mies in the past. (An SVG subsidiary—Tinsley Laboratories—makes key opti­cal com­po­nents for the military’s satel­lite and sur­veil­lance systems.)

Pro­gram High­lights Include: The lim­ited par­tic­i­pa­tion of Baath Party offi­cials in the new Iraqi gov­ern­ment; Malek’s role in purg­ing Jews from the Bureau of Labor Sta­tis­tics; Malek’s role in over­see­ing the Repub­li­can eth­nics’ role in the 1988 cam­paign; Karl Rove’s intro­duc­tion to pol­i­tics as a dirty tricks spe­cial­ist for Nixon aide Don­ald Seg­retti; Linda Tripp adviser Lucy Goldberg’s role as a dirty tricks spe­cial­ist for the Nixon cam­paign in 1972 (Gold­berg per­suaded Linda Tripp to tape Mon­ica Lewinsky’s con­ver­sa­tions, lead­ing to Clinton’s impeachment.)

1. The saber-rattling between the US and North Korea over nuclear arms has eclipsed the fact that US Sec­re­tary of Defense Rums­feld was a direc­tor of the Swiss-based engi­neer­ing com­pany that sold North Korea its light-water reactors.

“Defense Sec­re­tary Rums­feld rarely keeps his opin­ions to him­self. He tends not to com­pro­mise with his ene­mies. And he clearly dis­dains the com­mu­nist regime in North Korea. So it’s sur­pris­ing that there is no clear pub­lic record of his views on the con­tro­ver­sial 1994 deal in which the U.S. agreed to pro­vide North Korea with two light-water nuclear reac­tors in exchange for Pyongyang end­ing its nuclear weapons pro­gram. What’s even more sur­pris­ing about Rumsfeld’s silence is that he sat on the board of the com­pany that won a $200 mil­lion con­tract to pro­vide the design and key com­po­nents for the reac­tors. The com­pany is Zurich-based engi­neer­ing giant ABB, which signed the con­tract in early 2000, well before Rums­feld gave up his board seat and joined the Bush administration . . .”

(“Rummy’s North Korea Con­nec­tion” by Richard Behar; For­tune; 4/28/2003; p. 1; accessed at www.fortune.com .)

2.

“ . . . Rums­feld declined requests by For­tune to elab­o­rate on his role. But ABB spokesman Bjo­ern Edlund has told For­tune that ‘board mem­bers were informed about this project.’ And other ABB offi­cials say there is no way such a large and high-stakes project, involv­ing com­plex ques­tions of lia­bil­ity, would not have come to the atten­tion of the board. ‘A writ­ten sum­mary would prob­a­bly have gone to the board before the deal was signed,’ says Robert New­man, a for­mer pres­i­dent of ABB’s U.S. nuclear divi­sion who spear­headed the project. ‘I’m sure they were aware.’”

(Ibid.; p. 2.)

3.

“For­tune con­tacted 15 ABB board mem­bers who served at the time the com­pany was bid­ding for the Pyongyang con­tract, and all but one declined to com­ment. That direc­tor, who asked not to be iden­ti­fied, says he’s con­vinced that ABB’s chair­man at the time, Percy Barnevik, told the board about the reac­tor project in the mid-1990’s. ‘This was a major thing for ABB,’ the for­mer direc­tor says, ‘and exten­sive polit­i­cal lob­by­ing was done.’”

(Idem.)

4.

“The direc­tor recalls being told that Rums­feld was asked ‘to lobby in Wash­ing­ton’ on ABB’s behalf in the mid-1990’s because a rival Amer­i­can com­pany had com­plained about a foreign-owned firm get­ting the work. Although he couldn’t pro­vide details, Goran Lund­berg, who ran ABB’s power-generation busi­ness until 1995, says he’s ‘pretty sure that at some point Don was involved,’ since it was not unusual to seek help from board mem­bers ‘when we needed con­tacts with the U.S. government.’”

(Idem.)

5. Instru­men­tal in side­track­ing the late FBI agent John O’Neill’s inves­ti­ga­tion of Osama bin Laden; Repub­li­can “Old Per­son” Bar­bara Bod­ine later turned up as tem­po­rary US gov­er­nor of Bagh­dad. Was this in exchange for her ser­vices in putting off O’Neill’s Yemen inves­ti­ga­tion of the bomb­ing of the USS Cole?

“Bar­bara Bod­ine, who helped thwart FBI vet­eran John O’Neill back when he was hot on the trail of Osama Bin Laden before 9/11, has been named Gov­er­nor of Bagh­dad. Sur­prised to hear it? Lit­tle wonder—this story was swept as far under the rug as the Bush admin­is­tra­tion could sweep it. I saw one story—in FOX news online, but that was quickly scrubbed. Why? Because within this story was a link to an arti­cle I wrote in 2001 detail­ing Bodine’s role in derail­ing the hunt for Bin Laden after the USS Cole tragedy. So, while we hear about ‘retired Gen­eral Gar­ner’ (who is, in fact a very un-retired CEO of a huge defense con­tract­ing com­pany, SY Cole­man), we haven’t heard the name Bod­ine men­tioned until now.”

(“Cheryl Seal Spe­cial Report: Woman Who thwarted Hunt for Osama Bin Laden is Act­ing Gov­er­nor of Bagh­dad?”; Cheryl Seal Report; 4/23/2003; p. 1; accessed via e-mail from a highly cred­i­ble source.)

6.

“Yet Bod­ine arrived in Um Qusar on April 8. Here’s a link to the story cit­ing her posi­tion as ‘mayor of Bagh­dad’ from a US Embassy site (as long as it remains unscrubbed. Scroll down to: www.usembassy-israel.org.il/publish/press/2003/april/0411 .)

(Ibid.; p. 2.)

7.

“Choos­ing a woman gov­er­nor in a Mus­lim coun­try was cal­cu­lated to foment trou­ble with the con­ser­v­a­tive Shiites—worse, a woman skilled in coverups for rightwing bosses. There is already a con­flict brew­ing between Bod­ine and Iraqi Mohammed Mohsen Zubaidi, who says HE is the gov­er­nor of Bagh­dad. This story was in the Wash­ing­ton Post today . . . but notice how extremely vague all ref­er­ences to Bod­ine are. The reporter does not come right out and say Bod­ine is, in fact, the des­ig­nated Gov­er­nor of Baghdad . . .”

(Idem.)

8.

“ ‘SMOKING GUN THREE: Was Bin Laden hunter John O’Neill a Casu­alty of the Bush Admin­stra­tion?’” Until he resigned, in August of 2001, John O’Neill was the direc­tor of antiter­ror­ism for the FBI’s New York office. O’Neill had worked on the inves­ti­ga­tions of the first WTC bomb­ing in 1993 and the attacks on the Amer­i­can embassies in Africa in 1998. He became one of the world’s top experts on Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda. O’Neill believed that ‘All the answers, every­thing needed to dis­man­tle Osama bin Laden’s orga­ni­za­tion can be found in Saudi Ara­bia.’ Yet the Bush admin­is­tra­tion blocked O’Neill’s efforts to inves­ti­gate the Saudi ties to bin Laden. The main obsta­cles to inves­ti­gat­ing Islamic ter­ror­ism, asserted O’Neill, were US oil cor­po­rate inter­ests and the played by Saudi Ara­bia in it.”

(Idem.)

9.

“For exam­ple, Bush blocked an FBI inves­ti­ga­tion of the bin Laden fam­ily and kept his family’s busi­ness ties to the bin Ladens as secret as pos­si­ble. Among these busi­ness deal­ings were bin Laden invest­ments in the Car­lyle Group and con­nec­tions between bin Laden and George W. Bush’s first oil com­pa­nies. It must have truly enraged O’Neill if he knew that Osama bin Laden had flown to Dubai for 10 days for treat­ment at the Amer­i­can hos­pi­tal, where he was vis­ited by local CIA agent Larry Mitchell on July 12. O’Neill was very well aware of the warn­ings that came out in the sum­mer of 2001. But it was obvi­ous that he was con­sid­ered more of a lia­bil­ity than an asset to the oil-obsessed Bush administration.”

(Idem.)

10.

“Back in 2000, O’Neill had been inves­ti­gat­ing the bomb­ing of the USS Cole, for which he was sure bin Laden was respon­si­ble. How­ever, the US ambas­sador to Yemen, one Bar­bara Bod­ine, ham­strung FBI efforts at every turn, pub­licly call­ing O’Neill a liar, refus­ing to allow his men to be armed with more than small hand­guns and, in gen­eral, crip­pling the inves­ti­ga­tion. Although Bod­ine claims she was try­ing to keep diplo­matic rela­tions run­ning smoothly, her his­tory shows otherwise.”

(Ibid.; pp. 2–3.)

11. Bodine’s pro­fes­sional resume and past ser­vices ren­dered under the Rea­gan and Bush admin­is­tra­tions is detailed in the article.

“Bar­bara Bod­ine has served pri­mar­ily under right-wing old boys and in areas where their oil inter­ests are being served. Under Rea­gan she served as Deputy Prin­ci­ple Offi­cer in Bagh­dad, Iraq. Under Bush, Sr., she served as Deputy Chief of Mis­sion in Kuwait and was there dur­ing the Gulf War. She has also worked for Bob Dole, and far more omi­nously, for Henry Kissinger. Now, under Bush, Jr., she is in Yemen imped­ing an FBI inves­ti­ga­tion that focused on the son of a Bush fam­ily busi­ness associate.”

(Ibid.; p. 3.)

12. Fur­ther devel­op­ing Bodine’s role in the Cole affair, the story alleges that Bod­ine bears a mea­sure of respon­si­bil­ity for the bomb­ing itself.

“What makes Bodine’s actions toward O’Neill par­tic­u­larly despi­ca­ble is that she was said to be in part to blame for the Cole dis­as­ter. Even though she had been warned that the risk of attacks on Amer­i­cans in the Yemen area were extremely high at that time, the Cole entered port under the low­est grade of secu­rity per­mit­ted in the Mid­dle East with no warn­ing to the destroyer. A top mil­i­tary ana­lyst for the Pentagon’s Defense Intel­li­gence Agency quit in protest the day after the bomb­ing because of Bod­ine and Gen­eral Anthony Zinn’s deci­sion to allow the Cole to come into port.”

(Idem.)

13.

“In July, Bod­ine had O’Neill and the FBI barred from Yemen. About that time, O’Neill’s name had been pro­posed by Richard Clarke as Clarke’s suc­ces­sor as ter­ror­ism czar at the National Secu­rity Coun­cil. But a very mys­te­ri­ous inci­dent that had hap­pened nearly a year before was dredged up and used to blow that pos­si­bil­ity out of the water. In Novem­ber of 2000, at a retire­ment sem­i­nar in Tampa, O’Neill left his brief­case for a few moments in the con­ven­tion room to go around the cor­ner to use the phone. When he returned in a few min­utes, the brief case, con­tain­ing some papers con­sid­ered clas­si­fied, was gone. It soon turned up, but the inci­dent was seized upon as an excuse to guar­an­tee O’Neill would not get pro­moted. Was it a real theft? Or a set up to squeeze out the man who asked too many ques­tions about Saudis and oil? O’Neill had finally had enough and quit.”

(Idem.)

14. In FTR#403, we exam­ined the pos­si­bil­ity that Saudi agree­ment to let the US use its bases in the Iraq war was in exchange for post-war influ­ence in Iraq and the pos­si­ble (par­tial) reten­tion of Baath Party oper­a­tives. Although the Baath Party was for­mally barred from power shortly after the pro­gram was recorded, Baath offi­cials had achieved some par­tic­i­pa­tion in the post-war government.

“Hun­dreds of Iraqi doc­tors, nurses and health work­ers demon­strated today against a deci­sion by the Amer­i­can author­i­ties here to appoint Ali al-Janabi, a senior Baath Party mem­ber, to be min­is­ter of health. The demon­stra­tion by doc­tors in starched white coats was the lat­est indi­ca­tion of ris­ing con­cern over the endur­ing influ­ence of some mem­bers of the party that was long the vehi­cle for Sad­dam Hus­sein to impose his ter­ror on Iraq.”

(“Hus­sein Loy­al­ists Rise Again, Enrag­ing Iraqis” by Patrick E. Tyler; The New York Times; 5/8/2003; p. A1.)

15.

“A long-awaited cab­i­net reshuf­fle in Saudi Ara­bia has brought into the gov­ern­ment only five new faces, dis­ap­point­ing lib­er­als who had thought the reshape would her­ald the start of reform. The reshuf­fle kept in place Ali El Naimi, the oil min­is­ter, and the princes from the rul­ing al-Saud fam­ily who hold the strate­gic port­fo­lios of defense, for­eign affairs and the inte­rior. ‘It is much less than every­one expected,’ said a west­ern diplo­mat. ‘No key min­is­ter has been changed.’ He added that there had been spec­u­la­tion the reshuf­fle would mark the start of a process of reform that had been debated in news­pa­per columns and within elite cir­cles in recent weeks . . .”

(“Saudi Cab­i­net Reshuf­fle Dis­ap­points Lib­er­als as Key Min­is­ters Remain” by Heba Saleh; The Finan­cial Times; 5/1/2003; p. 6.)

16. Dis­ap­point­ing many and (per­haps) fore­telling a wave of reac­tion in Saudi Ara­bia, a long-promised shake-up of the Saudi cab­i­net proved to be largely cos­metic. (The day after this pro­gram was recorded, Saudi Ara­bia was hit by a coor­di­nated series of attacks by Al Qaeda oper­a­tives. Taken in con­junc­tion with the infor­ma­tion in FTR#390, this sug­gests the dis­tinct pos­si­bil­ity that the Saudis gave the US the “left-hand turn sig­nal” with regard to the well-documented Saudi-funding of Al Qaeda.)

“ . . . Many lib­er­als, how­ever, fear that reform if it comes, will be too lit­tle, too late. They say urgent steps are needed to deal effec­tively with the prob­lems of a pre­dom­i­nantly young soci­ety suf­fer­ing from a host of ills rang­ing from unem­ploy­ment to reli­gious extremism.”

(Idem.)

17. As dis­cussed in FTR#’s 395, 403 the pos­si­bil­ity that the pow­er­ful and wealthy bin Laden fam­ily may get some of “the action” in the recon­struc­tion of Iraq is one to be con­sid­ered. The bin Ladens have cap­i­tal par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Bech­tel Cor­po­ra­tion, which is con­tract­ing for much of the recon­struc­tion busi­ness in Iraq.

“ . . .Now there is a new and demon­stra­ble con­nec­tion, but it is not the kind that the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion had in mind. In fact, it is more likely to fuel the spec­u­la­tions of con­spir­acy the­o­rists than it is to put their fears to rest. It turns out that a money trail runs—albeit rather circuitously—from the lucra­tive busi­ness of rebuild­ing Iraq to the for­tune behind Osama bin Laden. Bin Laden’s estranged fam­ily, a sprawl­ing, extra­or­di­nar­ily wealthy Saudi Ara­bian dynasty, is a sub­stan­tial investor in a pri­vate equity firm founded by the Bech­tel Group of San Fran­cisco. Bech­tel is also the global con­struc­tion and engi­neer­ing com­pany to which the U.S. gov­ern­ment recently awarded the first major multimillion-dollar con­tract to recon­struct war-ravaged Iraq. In a closed com­pet­i­tive bid­ding process, the United States Agency for Inter­na­tional Devel­op­ment chose Bech­tel to rebuild the major ele­ments of Iraq’s infra­struc­ture, includ­ing its roads, rail­roads, air­ports, hos­pi­tals, and schools, and its water and elec­tri­cal sys­tems. In the first phase of the con­tract, the U.S. gov­ern­ment will pay Bech­tel nearly thirty-five mil­lion dol­lars, but experts say that the cost is likely to reach six hun­dred and eighty mil­lion dur­ing the next year and a half.”

(“Depart­ment of Con­nec­tions: The Con­trac­tors” by Jane Mayer; The New Yorker; 5/5/2003; p. 35.)

18.

“When the con­tract was awarded, two weeks ago, the Admin­is­tra­tion did not men­tion that the bin Laden fam­ily has an ongo­ing rela­tion­ship with Bech­tel. The bin Ladens have a ten-million-dollar stake in the Fre­mont Group, a San Francisco-based com­pany for­merly called Bech­tel Invest­ments, which was until 1986 a sub­sidiary of Bech­tel. The Fre­mont Group’s Web site, which makes no men­tion of the bin Ladens, notes that ‘though now inde­pen­dent, Fre­mont enjoys a close rela­tion­ship with Bech­tel.’ A spokes­woman for the com­pany con­firmed that Fremont’s ‘major­ity own­er­ship is the Bech­tel fam­ily.’ And a list of the cor­po­rate board of direc­tors shows sub­stan­tial over­lap. Five of Fremont’s eight direc­tors are also direc­tors of Bech­tel. One Fre­mont direc­tor Riley Bech­tel, is the chair­man and chief exec­u­tive offi­cer of the Bech­tel Group, and is a mem­ber of the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion: he was appointed this year to serve on the President’s Export Coun­cil. In addi­tion, George Shultz, the Sec­re­tary of State in the Rea­gan Admin­is­tra­tion, serves as a direc­tor both of Fre­mont and of the Bech­tel Group, where he once was pres­i­dent and still is listed as senior counsellor.”

(Ibid.; pp. 35–36.)

19. The fact that Bech­tel will be sub­con­tract­ing much of the work to other firms also sug­gests the pos­si­bil­ity that the bin Ladens may get some of the Iraqi recon­struc­tion business.

“Although the Bech­tel Group in San Fran­cisco has been selected as the prime con­trac­tor for up to $680 mil­lion worth of recon­struc­tion work in Iraq, a sub­stan­tial per­cent­age of that money–half or more, by some estimates—will actu­ally flow to sub­con­trac­tors, which are expected to rely heav­ily on Iraqi work­ers, gov­ern­ment and com­pany offi­cials said yes­ter­day. ‘Bech­tel has told us that they plan on using Iraqi resources to the great­est degree pos­si­ble,’ said Luke Zah­ner, a spokesman for the United States Agency for Inter­na­tional Devel­op­ment, which awarded the con­tract on Thursday.”

(“Bechtel’s Sub­con­tracts Are Expected to Include Non-U.S. Com­pa­nies and Employ Iraqis” by Diana B. Hen­riques; The New York Times; 4/19/2003; p. B8.)

20. Another indi­ca­tion that the bin Ladens may profit from the Iraq recon­struc­tion busi­ness is the fact that Mid­dle East­ern firms are going to be par­tic­i­pants in the Bech­tel subcontracting.

“So far, the signs are encour­ag­ing. Bech­tel Group Inc., the San Fran­cisco infra­struc­ture group that has landed a con­tract val­ued at $680 mil­lion has said it plans to hand much of its work to other com­pa­nies, includ­ing those from the Mid­dle East. Bech­tel has a long his­tory in the region and employs more than 1,000 work­ers in Arab countries.”

(“Arab Firms Want In on Iraq Action” by David Luh­now; The Wall Street Jour­nal; 5/6/2003; p. 7.)

21. Next, the pro­gram reviews infor­ma­tion from Mis­cel­la­neous Archive Show M24—available from Spitfire—concerning the Repub­li­can eth­nic orga­ni­za­tion, a tra­di­tional repos­i­tory for fas­cists and anti-Semites and (more recently) Islam­o­fas­cists as well. M24 high­lights the role of Bush (the elder) cam­paign aide Fred Malek’s role in purg­ing Jews from the bureau of labor sta­tis­tics. Malek went on to play a key role in George H.W. Bush’s 1988 campaign.

(“GOP Aide Got Data on Jews for Nixon” by Wal­ter Pin­cus and Bob Wood­ward [Wash­ing­ton Post]; San Jose Mer­cury News; 9/11/1988.)

22. After leav­ing the Bush cam­paign over the con­tro­versy con­cern­ing his role in the Nixon admin­is­tra­tion, Malek went on to play a brief, but piv­otal role in the devel­op­ment of the Car­lyle Group, one of a num­ber of busi­ness ven­tures join­ing the Bush and bin Laden families.

“Then in Sep­tem­ber 1988, the Car­lyle Group would get an infu­sion of expe­ri­ence, and con­tro­versy, when Fred­eric V. Malek, a for­mer per­son­nel chief for Pres­i­dent Nixon, signed on. Malek, nick­named ‘The Ax’ for his days as Nixon’s strong­man, man­aged [Car­lyle exec­u­tives Steven] Nor­ris and [Dan] D’Aniello at Mar­riott in the early 1980’s. Close friends with George H.W. Bush, Malek had just been rewarded for coor­di­nat­ing Bush’s New Orleans con­ven­tion with a posi­tion as deputy chair­man of the Repub­li­can National Com­mit­tee (RNC) in August 1988 . . .”

(The Iron Tri­an­gle: Inside the Secret World of the Car­lyle Group; by Dan Briody; Jon Wiley & Sons [HC]; ISBN: 0–471-28108–5; pp. 9–10 of online excerpted segment.)

23. After dis­cussing Malek’s depar­ture from the Bush cam­paign, the broad­cast delin­eates his (brief but piv­otal) role with Carlyle.

“He knew that he was in dan­ger and he knew imme­di­ately where to go. Nor­ris called Malek the day the news hit the papers, and told him to calm down, and come over to the Car­lyle offices on Penn­syl­va­nia Avenue. Malek had his motor­cade sneak into the garage , so as not to be seen by any­one. ‘I’ve never seen a man so upset in my life,’ Nor­ris recalls. ‘He was lit­er­ally shak­ing.’ Nor­ris set Malek up with an office adjoin­ing his own, and Car­lyle gave him a draw, or a salary, which Malek would the­o­ret­i­cally have to earn back. Malek was by far the best con­nected of the nascent com­pany. He brought with him deep rela­tion­ships with the Bush fam­ily, the Saudi Ara­bian royal fam­ily and count­less Wash­ing­ton insid­ers. Even with his freshly tainted rep­u­ta­tion, he would go on to spear­head sev­eral big deals for the com­pany, includ­ing an ill-fated buy­out of Cat­erair, the Texas-based air­line cater­ing com­pany that would hire George W. Bush. Though Malek’s stay at Car­lyle would amount to noth­ing more than time on the lam, hid­ing out while the furor over his anti-Semitic actions died down, he did man­age to set Car­lyle up with a hand­ful of high-powered Repub­li­can con­nec­tions. He would soon return to pub­lic life to lead Pres­i­dent George H.W. Bush’s reelec­tion cam­paign in 1991 . . .”

(Ibid.; pp. 10–11.)

24.

“ . . . Though brief, Malek’s time with Car­lyle would ulti­mately change the face of the com­pany for­ever. ‘I brought a lit­tle more name recog­ni­tion, a lit­tle more gray hair,” recalled Malek in an inter­view for this book.”

(Ibid.; p. 11.)

25. Karl Rove has played an impor­tant role in the Bush admin­is­tra­tion, includ­ing his role in help­ing to slash taxes with Grover Norquist, the Islamist point man in the GOP eth­nic orga­ni­za­tion. As noted in FTR#407, the twin strains of bud­get deficits brought on by Norquist’s tax-slashing mania and the mil­i­tary build-up occa­sioned by the attacks of his Islamist asso­ciates on 9/11 have seri­ously dam­aged the US econ­omy. It is Mr. Emory’s view that this is, in all prob­a­bil­ity, not a coincidence.

“Even so, his friends say they assume he addresses those ques­tions dur­ing his exten­sive pri­vate time with Mr. Bush. ‘They go the other way and keep Karl out of the room where, absent the cri­tique, you’d want Karl in the room’ said Grover Norquist, pres­i­dent of Amer­i­cans for Tax reform a con­ser­v­a­tive group that works closely with Mr. Rove.”

(“Push­ing an Agenda, Far From Iraq” by Adam Nagour­ney and Richard W. Steven­son; The New York Times; 4/5/2003; p. b1.)

26. Rove’s back­ground as a dirty tricks spe­cial­ist with Nixon aide Don­ald Seg­retti is not to be over­looked. Nor is his entrance into pol­i­tics as a pro­tégé of George H.W. Bush.

“He’s America’s Joseph Goebbels. As a 21-year old young Repub­li­can in Texas, Karl Rove not only pimped for Richard Nixon’s chief polit­i­cal dirty tricks strate­gist Don­ald Seg­retti but soon caught the eye of the incom­ing Repub­li­can National Com­mit­tee Chair­man, George H.W. Bush. Rove’s dirty tricks on behalf of Nixon’s 1972 cam­paign cat­a­pulted Rove onto the national stage. From his Eagle’s Nest in the West Wing of the White House, Rove now directs a for­mi­da­ble polit­i­cal dirty tricks oper­a­tion and dis­in­for­ma­tion mill.”

(“Expos­ing Karl Rove” by Wayne Mad­sen; Coun­ter­punch; 11/1/2002; p. 1.)

27.

“Since his for­ma­tive polit­i­cal years when he tried to paint World War II B-24 pilot and hero George McGov­ern as a left-wing peacenik through his mid-level career as a planter of dis­in­for­ma­tion in the media on behalf of Texas and national GOP can­di­dates to his cur­rent role as Dubya’s ‘Sven­gali,’ Rove has prac­ticed the same style of slash and burn pol­i­tics as did his Nixon­ian men­tor Segretti.”

(Idem.)

28.

“Ger­man oppo­si­tion fig­ures in the mid-1930’s often lamented the fact that they could have stopped the rise of the Nazis if only they had been more united in a com­mon front when they had a chance. How­ever, they fell prey to the media manip­u­la­tion of Goebbels and fought among them­selves more than they did against the men­ace from the far right.”

(Ibid.; p. 4.)

29. Review­ing infor­ma­tion from FTR#311, the pro­gram high­lights Rove’s role in facil­i­tat­ing the deal between SVG and ASM Lith­o­g­ra­phy Hold­ing, a Dutch com­pany with impor­tant con­nec­tions to key Ger­man cor­po­ra­tions. In FTR#272, the view that this deal could com­pro­mise US national secu­rity is dis­cussed at some length.

(“Rove’s Intel Meet­ing Didn’t affect Rul­ing, White House Says;” The Wall Street Jour­nal; 6/14/2001p. A4.)

30. Next, the pro­gram exam­ines infor­ma­tion from FTR#272 about the pro­posed sale of the key Sil­i­con Val­ley firm to the Dutch hold­ing com­pany, ASM Lithography.

(“Spy Tech: The U.S. Edge” by Alan Tonel­son; San Jose Mer­cury News; 1/9/2001; p. B7.)

31. Sil­i­con Val­ley Group Inc. has Tins­ley Lab­o­ra­to­ries as a subsidiary.

(Idem.)

32. The lat­ter “has been the sole man­u­fac­turer of many of the state-of-the-art mir­rors and lenses in the high-powered cam­eras car­ried by America’s spy satellites-systems that the Clin­ton admin­is­tra­tion has called ‘among the most valu­able national secu­rity assets.’”

(Idem.)

33. Mr. Tonel­son wor­ried “that ASM’s far-flung global oper­a­tions and cor­po­rate alliances with com­pa­nies like Germany’s Carl Zeiss and Schott Glass could make it more dif­fi­cult to keep SVG/Tinsley’s advanced optics and lith­o­g­ra­phy capa­bil­i­ties from migrat­ing to unfriendly countries.”

(Idem.)

34. The role of the Zeiss and Schott works in the devel­op­ment of the Bor­mann Orga­ni­za­tion is the focal point of the next part of the discussion.

(Mar­tin Bor­mann: Nazi in Exile; Paul Man­ning; Copy­right 1981 [HC] Paul Man­ning; Lyle Stu­art Inc.; ISBN 0–8184-0309–8; p. 25.)

35. In addi­tion to Malek and Rove, Luciane Gold­berg had a back­ground in the dirty tricks depart­ment of the Nixon admin­stra­tion. Gold­berg had sig­nif­i­cant influ­ence in get­ting Linda Tripp to tape and dis­close her con­ver­sa­tions with Mon­ica Lewinsky—thus pre­cip­i­tat­ing the Clin­ton impeachment.

“The deal died, but Gold­berg stayed on the case, ulti­mately get­ting the news about Lewin­sky to the Jones camp, set­ting in motion the per­jury trap. Gold­berg, who referred to her­self as an ‘agent prova­ca­teur,’ was once a paid under­cover oper­a­tive for Richard Nixon, infil­trat­ing the 1972 pres­i­den­tial cam­paign of George McGov­ern. Anthony Lukas, author of Night­mare: The Under­side of the Nixon Years quoted Gold­berg as say­ing: ‘They were look­ing for really dirty stuff. Who was sleep­ing with whom, what the Secret Ser­vice men were doing with the stew­ardesses, who was smok­ing pot on the plane—that sort of thing.’ Accord­ing to the New Yorker, Gold­berg had har­bored a hatred for Democ­rats since Nixon’s forced res­ig­na­tion, but she was also in it for fun and profit.”

(Blinded by the Right: The Con­science of an ex-Conservative; by David Brock; Copy­right 2002 by David Brock; Three Rivers Press [SC]; 1–4000-4728–5; p. 337.)