Record­ed, March 23, 2008
MP3: 30-Minute Seg­ment
REALAUDIO NB: This RealAu­dio stream con­tains both FTR #630 and FTR #631 in sequence. Each is a 30 minute broad­cast.

Begin­ning with dis­cus­sion of the down­fall of New York Gov­er­nor Eliot Spitzer, the pro­gram notes spec­u­la­tion by syn­di­cat­ed colum­nist Robert Novak that GOP oper­a­tive Roger Stone may have some­how arranged the gam­bit. The pro­gram sets forth spec­u­la­tion that a Spitzer asso­ciate named Diet­rich (“Dieter”) Snell may have helped grease the skids for his osten­si­ble ally. Snell has proved less than vig­or­ous in his role as Senior Coun­sel to the 9/11 Com­mis­sion. Whether or not it is rel­e­vant to Snell’s asso­ci­a­tion with Spitzer, Mr. Emory notes that Spitzer’s dal­liance with a call girl sur­faced when pro­grams designed to spot­light poten­tial ter­ror­ist mon­ey trans­fers dis­closed Spitzer’s activ­i­ties. The cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the sting of Gov­er­nor Spitzer for fre­quent­ing call girls sug­gests that Spitzer’s enemies—numerous and powerful—may have engi­neered his down­fall. Recall that Spitzer had earned a well-deserved rep­u­ta­tion as a tough oppo­nent of chi­canery in the cor­po­rate and finan­cial realms. Spitzer’s down­fall occurred as he was prepar­ing to go after some of the cul­prits in the sub­prime cri­sis. The pro­gram con­cludes with colum­nist Paul Krugman’s rumi­na­tions about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a depres­sion stem­ming from the fail­ure of finan­cial insti­tu­tions in the wake of the sub­prime melt­down.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Krugman’s obser­va­tion that the stage for the cur­rent finan­cial cri­sis was set by the finan­cial industry’s grad­ual ero­sion of safe­guards imple­ment­ed dur­ing the New Deal in response to the Great Depres­sion.

1. Begin­ning with dis­cus­sion of the down­fall of New York Gov­er­nor Eliot Spitzer, the pro­gram notes spec­u­la­tion by syn­di­cat­ed colum­nist Robert Novak that GOP oper­a­tive Roger Stone may have some­how arranged the gam­bit. “ . . . Repub­li­can polit­i­cal oper­a­tive Roger Stone, Eliot Spitzer’s long­time antag­o­nist, pre­dict­ed his polit­i­cal demise more than three months in advance. ‘Eliot Spitzer will not serve out his term as gov­er­nor of the state of New York,’ Stone said Dec. 6 on Michael Smer­con­ish’s radio talk show. He gave no details. Spitzer’s entrap­ment by fed­er­al author­i­ties inves­ti­gat­ing a pros­ti­tu­tion ring raised spec­u­la­tion that Stone, with a 40-year record as a polit­i­cal hit man, some­how was behind it. . . .”
(“Intrigue: Novak Sug­gests GOP Oper­a­tive behind Spitzer Fall” by John Byrne; ther­aw­sto­ry; 3/17/2008.)

2. A Spitzer asso­ciate named Diet­rich (“Dieter”) Snell may have helped grease the skids for his osten­si­ble ally. Snell has proved less than vig­or­ous in his role as Senior Coun­sel to the 9/11 Com­mis­sion. In con­nec­tion with Diet­rich Snell, Mr. Emory pos­es a ques­tion: “What did the SS teach their chil­dren to do?” In par­tic­u­lar, what did the many SS offi­cers import­ed into the Unit­ed States teach their chil­dren to do? What is Diet­rich Snell’s back­ground? [For more infor­ma­tion on this sub­ject, see FTR#465—among oth­er programs—for infor­ma­tion about the Cru­sade For Free­dom, which graft­ed many SS offi­cers and fas­cist war crim­i­nals onto the Amer­i­can polit­i­cal infra­struc­ture, the GOP in par­tic­u­lar. In addi­tion, check out FTR#583, which dis­cuss­es the career of the son of Tscher­im Soob­zokov, one of the SS offi­cers who came to the U.S. to work for the CIA. For a deep­er under­stand­ing of the Third Reich’s plans for its post­war under­ground phase, read The Nazis Go Under­ground, avail­able for down­load for free on the Spit­fire web­site. To gain a mea­sure of under­stand­ing about the suc­cess­ful exe­cu­tion of those plans, read Mar­tin Bor­mann: Nazi in Exile, avail­able for down­load for free on the Spit­fire web­site. A syn­op­tic account of the book can be found in the descrip­tion for FTR#305.] “As the sex scan­dal hur­ri­cane engulfed Eliott Spitzer last week, one of his clos­est advi­sors at the eye of the storm was Diet­rich ‘Dieter’ Snell. An ex U.S. Attor­ney from the same office con­duct­ing the pros­ti­tu­tion probe, Snell is now defend­ing Spitzer in the ‘Troop­er­gate’ scan­dal and report­ed­ly rak­ing in hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars in legal fees for the inter­na­tion­al law firm he joined last year. A for­mer South­ern Dis­trict pros­e­cu­tor who lat­er became Senior Coun­sel to the 9/11 Com­mis­sion, Snell is also one of the ex Feds who rewrote his­to­ry in the Commission’s ‘Final Report’ by rely­ing entire­ly on the tor­tured ‘con­fes­sion’ of 9/11’s pur­port­ed ‘mas­ter­mind’ to pin­point the ori­gin of the ‘planes as mis­siles’ plot. He’s the same inves­ti­ga­tor who dis­missed as not ‘suf­fi­cient­ly cred­i­ble’ the tes­ti­mo­ny of a dec­o­rat­ed Navy Cap­tain who was part of a secret data min­ing oper­a­tion that uncov­ered evi­dence of 9/11 hijack­ers in the U.S. more than a year before the attacks. . . .
(“Spitzer’s Mouth­piece Has His Own Secrets to Hide” by Peter Lance; ther­aw­sto­ry; 3/18/2008.)

3. An Asia Times col­umn echoes Mr. Emory’s view that the wrong pub­lic fig­ure resigned. Note that the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the sting of Gov­er­nor Spitzer for fre­quent­ing call girls sug­gests that Spitzer’s enemies—numerous and powerful—may have engi­neered his down­fall. Recall that Spitzer had earned a well-deserved rep­u­ta­tion as a tough oppo­nent of chi­canery in the cor­po­rate and finan­cial realms. In light of Spitzer’s asso­ci­a­tion with Diet­rich Snell (see above), it is also inter­est­ing and pos­si­bly sig­nif­i­cant that finan­cial reg­u­la­tions intend­ed to catch ter­ror­ist mon­ey trans­fers were used to ensnare Spitzer. “ . . . In anoth­er one of those nice coin­ci­dences that seem to hap­pen when­ev­er Wall Street is down and out, the unpop­u­lar gov­er­nor of New York was found con­sort­ing with pros­ti­tutes through a Fed­er­al inves­ti­ga­tion that has all the hall­marks of a ‘hit job’ ordered from the very top. Spitzer was deeply unpop­u­lar in the cor­ri­dors of pow­er, and espe­cial­ly with the cur­rent Trea­sury Sec­re­tary Hank Paul­son, for dar­ing to take var­i­ous Wall Street firms down a few notch­es ear­li­er this decade. ‘ . . . After also hit­ting oth­er sacred cows such as large insur­ance com­pa­nies, Spitzer was ready­ing ammu­ni­tion to strike at the heart of the cur­rent sub­prime cri­sis by attack­ing the mono­line insur­ers and rat­ing agen­cies. It is almost too con­ve­nient that the dis­clo­sures of his extracur­ric­u­lar activ­i­ties came this week. Still, let us take every­thing said at face val­ue and not attempt to con­jec­ture any con­spir­a­cy behind all this. . . .”
(“For­get Spitzer, Fire Bernanke” by Chan Akya; Asia Times; 3/15/2008.)

4. Omi­nous echoes of the Great Depres­sion were men­tioned by colum­nist Paul Krug­man. Krug­man notes that the sever­i­ty of the Great Depres­sion stemmed pri­mar­i­ly from the runs on banks. He feels that the “the shad­ow bank­ing sys­tem” that has been dev­as­tat­ed by the sub­prime melt­down might well expe­ri­ence a “run”, not unlike what was seen in the 1930’s. The finan­cial tur­moil has result­ed from Amer­i­cans hav­ing ignored the his­tor­i­cal lessons of the Great Depres­sion and insist­ed on “par­ty­ing like it’s 1929.”
(“Par­ty­ing Like It’s 1929” by Paul Krug­man, New York Times; 3/21/08.)