MP3: 30-Minute Seg­ment
REALAUDIO NB: This RealAu­dio stream con­tains both FTRs 653 and 654 in sequence. Each is a 30 minute broad­cast.

Intro­duc­tion: As nov­el­ist William Faulkn­er observed–“the past is nev­er dead and buried, it isn’t even past.” As we look to the per­ilous future which Pres­i­dent-elect Oba­ma must nav­i­gate, it is impor­tant to antic­i­pate some of the avenues of attack that the forces opposed to him might use. This pro­gram explores a web of asso­ci­a­tions in Chica­go that con­nect Oba­ma to the urban polit­i­cal machine of the Daley fam­i­ly and–more importantly–to a milieu of slum­lords who’ve gen­er­at­ed much of their wealth at the expense of poor African-Amer­i­cans. (As dis­turb­ing as this con­nec­tion is, Mr. Emory stress­es that this is not nec­es­sar­i­ly to be held against Oba­ma. Dave opined that no one can ever become Pres­i­dent or even a major par­ty can­di­date with­out asso­ci­at­ing with some pret­ty unsa­vory indi­vid­u­als.) Of greater sig­nif­i­cance for our pur­pos­es is the fact that one of the prin­ci­pals in this slum­lord net­work–Syr­i­an-born Antoine “Tony” Rezko described by some as Oba­ma’s polit­i­cal godfather–has links to the Bush admin­is­tra­tion, GOP string-puller Karl Rove and to peo­ple asso­ci­at­ed with the Car­lyle Group. In addi­tion to Rezko’s links to the very Repub­li­can ele­ments who are ranged on the oppo­site side of the aisle from Oba­ma, Rezko has links to ter­ror­ist ele­ments as well. (This is explored at greater length in FTR #655.) Interestingly–possibly sig­nif­i­cant­ly–Rezko’s ele­va­tion into the ranks of Illi­nois politi­cos came cour­tesy of Talat Oth­man, a close asso­ciate of the Bush fam­i­ly and admin­is­tra­tion, as well as the man who inter­ced­ed on behalf of the indi­vid­u­als and insi­tu­tions tar­get­ed by the Oper­a­tion Green Quest raids of 3/20/2002.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Orga­nized crime links of some of Oba­ma’s Chica­go slum­lord con­nec­tions; the untime­ly deaths of some of Oba­ma’s slum­lord asso­ciates; review of the Grover Norquist/Karl Rove/GOP/Islamist con­nec­tion.

1. Antoine “Tony” Rezko was more than a casu­al acquain­tance of Oba­ma’s.

” . . . The Davis Min­er Barn­hill & Gal­land law firm, where Oba­ma worked for near­ly a decade, served as a hub for a slew of slum­lord deals, many that ben­e­fit­ed the fir­m’s founder, Alli­son Davis, and Oba­ma’s claims that he knew noth­ing about the inner work­ings of this small firm, rep­re­sent an insult to the intel­li­gence of the Amer­i­can pub­lic.

Tony Rezko was Oba­ma polit­i­cal God­fa­ther. Oba­ma received his first con­tri­bu­tions of $2,000, to launch his polit­i­cal career as a state sen­a­tor on July 31, 1995, from Rezko. Oba­ma start­ed out say­ing that Rezko only raised $50,000 or $60,000 for his polit­i­cal career but after a year of lying his way through the pri­maries, the lat­est total he gave to the Sun-Times and Tri­bune dur­ing inter­views on March 14, 2008, adds up to $250,000.

For a year, he also min­i­mized his rela­tion­ship with Rezko by telling the media that he only had din­ner or lunch with Rezko one or twice a year. But when con­front­ed by Sun-Times reporters dur­ing the March 14 inter­view, with the alle­ga­tion that an FBI mole saw him com­ing and going to Rezko’s office often and that three sources said he talked to Rezko on the phone dai­ly, Oba­ma changed his tune.

Now the sto­ry is that he may have talked to Rezko dai­ly at times dur­ing cam­paigns but some­times he went for a whole month with­out talk­ing to him. ‘I have to say we’re talk­ing over the course of 10 years,” Oba­ma said, “there might have been spurts where I talked to him dai­ly.’ . . .”

“Barack Oba­ma-The Wiz­ard of Oz” by Eve­lyn Pringle; Scoop.co.NZ; 3/29/2008.

2. The Rezko milieu is fun­da­men­tal­ly cor­rupt. Vet­er­an lis­ten­ers will rec­og­nize the pat­tern of strate­gic lethal­i­ty man­i­fest­ing itself in the wake of the Rezko cor­rup­tion scan­dals. Many prin­ci­pal tar­gets of the inves­ti­ga­tion died as the inquiry unfold­ed.

” . . . In terms of dol­lar amounts of cam­paign con­tri­bu­tions direct­ly from Rezko in Illi­nois, the top four earn­ers were, the now deceased Pres­i­dent of the Cook Coun­ty Board, John Stroger, Blago­je­vich, Chica­go May­or, Richard Daley, and Oba­ma — in that order.

Rezko was the head of Stroger’s cam­paign finance com­mit­tee at the same time that he served on Oba­ma US Sen­ate finance com­mit­tee.

When it came time for Stroger’s reelec­tion cam­paign, in the midst of the erupt­ing Rezko scan­dals in the media, on April 8, 2005, the Tri­bune report­ed that Stroger ‘has select­ed belea­guered busi­ness­man and polit­i­cal power­bro­ker Antoin ‘Tony’ Rezko as one of the hon­orary chairs of his cam­paign fundrais­er next month.’ Stroger appoint­ed Rezko’s wife Rita to the Cook Coun­ty Employ­ee Appeals Board, which hears cas­es filed by fired or dis­ci­plined work­ers, at a part-time salary of $37,000 a year.

Accord­ing to doc­u­ments filed in the Rezko cor­rup­tion case, this was Rita’s sole income when she sup­pos­ed­ly came up with a $125,000 down pay­ment and secured a $500,000 mort­gage to buy the $625,00 lot next to Oba­ma. Less than a year after Oba­ma bought his strip of land, Rita sold the rest of the lot to attor­ney Michael Sreenan, and made a prof­it of more than $50,000.

On Feb­ru­ary 27, 2007, the Sun-Times point­ed out that Oba­ma’s ‘new neigh­bor, Michael Sreenan,’ had con­tributed $5,000 to Oba­ma’s cam­paigns. Less than a year after buy­ing the lot, Sreenan put it up for sale for $1.5 mil­lion in Octo­ber 2007.

Of course John Stroger will not be answer­ing any ques­tions about cor­rup­tion, or any oth­er mat­ter, because he died on Jan­u­ary 18, 2008. His for­mer chief of staff and god­son, Orlan­do Jones, will not be talk­ing either because he was found dead of self-inflict­ed gun wounds in Sep­tem­ber 2007, ‘just as a cor­rup­tion inquiry tar­get­ing him was heat­ing up,’ accord­ing to a Sep­tem­ber 7, 2007 report by CBS News chan­nel 2 Chica­go. ‘Jones left his posi­tion in coun­ty gov­ern­ment to cre­ate a lob­by­ing firm in asso­ci­a­tion with Tony Rezko, who has been indict­ed on fraud charges,’ CBS report­ed. . . .”

Idem.

3. At the epi­cen­ter of Mr. Emory’s explo­ration of the Rezko/Obama/slumlord con­nec­tion is the polit­i­cal rela­tion­ship between Rezko and the polit­i­cal forces that will be work­ing to destroy Barack Oba­ma and the Unit­ed States. Rezko is deeply con­nect­ed to the GOP, the Bush admin­is­tra­tion and, as we will see, Islamist ele­ments asso­ci­at­ed with the Under­ground Reich.

” . . . The trail of cor­rup­tion involv­ing the peo­ple rais­ing mon­ey for Oba­ma’s polit­i­cal career stretch­es from the city of Chica­go to the Illi­nois toll­way to the O’Hare air­port all the way over to Iraq. And tes­ti­mo­ny in Rezko’s cor­rup­tion tri­al reveals that an equal num­ber of Demo­c­rat and Repub­li­can crooks ben­e­fit­ed from all the mon­ey­mak­ing schemes.

Rezko is not a Demo­c­rat; he’s an equal oppor­tu­ni­ty prof­i­teer. He sup­port­ed Pres­i­dent George Bush and attend­ed a Christ­mas par­ty at the White House in Decem­ber 2003, at the same time that he was a top fundrais­er for Oba­ma’s US Sen­ate cam­paign.

Rezko co-host­ed a $3.8 mil­lion Chica­go fundrais­er for Bush in 2003, and on Decem­ber 9, 2003, he donat­ed $4,000 to Bush, as a “self-employed busi­ness­man,” and gave anoth­er $2,000 on Decem­ber 19, 2003, accord­ing to the Cen­ter for Respon­sive Pol­i­tics.

Pri­or to back­ing Rod Blago­je­vich for gov­er­nor of Illi­nois, Rezko threw his mon­ey behind Repub­li­can can­di­dates for gov­er­nor, includ­ing George Ryan, who was con­vict­ed of dol­ing out leas­es and con­tracts to cronies and sen­tenced to prison for more than 6 years.

Rezko then switched hors­es and chose Blago­je­vich in 2002 and Oba­ma has sup­port­ed Blago­je­vich, even when his admin­is­tra­tion was embroiled in cor­rup­tion inves­ti­ga­tions. Recent tes­ti­mo­ny in the Rezko tri­al by his co-con­spir­a­tor, Chica­go busi­ness­man, Stu­art Levine, explained that Rezko had plans for Blago­je­vich to be Pres­i­den­tial, not Oba­ma. How­ev­er, any­body fol­low­ing the tri­al knows that Blago­je­vich is more like­ly to be head­ed to the ‘Big House’ rather than occu­py­ing the White House. . . .”

Idem.

4. The Obama/Rezko/slumlord milieu is linked to that of the GOP and George W. Bush through-among oth­er ele­ments-the Car­lyle Group and Karl Rove. These links will assume larg­er sig­nif­i­cance when we explore attempts at bad­jack­et­ing Oba­ma in FTR #655.

” . . . Some of the peo­ple list­ed in the indict­ments as co-schemers and indi­vid­u­als include William Celli­ni, a long-stand­ing Repub­li­can power­bro­ker in Illi­nois, and Robert Kjel­lan­der, trea­sur­er for Chica­go Sun-Times the Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee.

In the April 3, 2008, Mark Brown wrote: ‘For more than three decades, William Celli­ni has been the unseen hand pulling the strings of Illi­nois gov­ern­ment, adroit­ly manip­u­lat­ing it to his pur­pose.’

‘That pur­pose,’ Brown not­ed, ‘was main­ly to make him­self rich — through lob­by­ing fees and insid­er con­tracts, gov­ern­ment loans and leas­es for his real estate devel­op­ments, and final­ly the coup de grace, his own river­boat casi­no com­pa­ny.’

Celli­ni was a co-founder of Com­mon­wealth Real­ty Advi­sors, ‘a firm that has received hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars in pen­sion funds to invest on behalf of retired state employ­ees and teach­ers,’ accord­ing to a report by Rick Pear­son in the April 6, 2008 Chica­go Tri­bune.

The Feds have sev­er­al incrim­i­nat­ing taped con­ver­sa­tions between Celli­ni and the co-schemers and after hear­ing the tapes, Sun-Time reporter, Mark Brown wrote:

‘That Celli­ni would slip up and allow him­self to be caught on a fed­er­al wire­tap is noth­ing short of a mir­a­cle to those of us who have mar­veled at his career and attempt­ed to expose his deals where we could — most­ly in vain and always too late to foil him.’

On Jan­u­ary 7, 2005, Crain’s Chica­go Busi­ness described Robert Kjel­lan­der as the ‘White House­’s man in Illi­nois,’ and not­ed that:

Mr Kjel­lan­der, ‘the GOP nation­al com­mit­tee­man from Illi­nois, long has been at the cen­ter of the state Repub­li­can Par­ty and relat­ed gov­ern­ment doings. He is a close asso­ciate of key pres­i­den­tial advi­sor Karl Rove, and is con­sid­ered the unof­fi­cial chief oper­a­tive in the state for Pres­i­dent George W. Bush.’

In 2005, the Feds issued a sub­poe­na to the Illi­nois Teach­ers Retire­ment Sys­tem pen­sion fund for records per­tain­ing to a deal in which Kjel­lan­der was paid $3.1 mil­lion by the Car­lyle Group, with an addi­tion­al $1.4 mil­lion still to come. Many lit­tle known facts about the secre­tive Car­lyle Group are dis­cussed in the book, ‘The Iron Tri­an­gle,’ by Dan Briody, includ­ing this bizarre eye-open­er:

‘On the morn­ing of Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001, ‘in the plush set­ting of the Ritz-Carl­ton hotel in Wash­ing­ton, DC, the Car­lyle Group was hold­ing its annu­al inter­na­tion­al investor con­fer­ence. Frank Car­luc­ci, James Bak­er III, David Ruben­stein, William Con­way, and Dan D’Aniel­low were togeth­er, along with a host of for­mer world lead­ers, for­mer defense experts, wealthy Arabs from the Mid­dle East, and major inter­na­tion­al investors as the ter­ror played out on tele­vi­sion.

‘There with them, look­ing after the invest­ments of his fam­i­ly was Shafiq bin Laden, Osama bin Laden’s estranged half-broth­er. George Bush Sr. was also at the con­fer­ence, but Car­lyle’s spokesper­son says the for­mer pres­i­dent left before the ter­ror attacks.

‘In any cir­cum­stance, a con­flu­ence of such polit­i­cal­ly com­plex and glob­al­ly con­nect­ed peo­ple would have been curi­ous, even news­wor­thy. But in the con­text of the ter­ror­ist attacks being waged against the Unit­ed States by a group of Sau­di nation­als led by Osama bin Laden, the group assem­bled at the Ritz-Carl­ton that day was a dis­con­cert­ing and freak­ish coin­ci­dence.’

Kjel­lan­der and Celli­ni have not been indict­ed — yet. When pros­e­cu­tors filed a prof­fer with the court out­lin­ing the evi­dence to be used at tri­al they made it known that they did not intend to call sev­er­al co-schemers to tes­ti­fy, includ­ing Celli­ni. Resko’s attor­neys then filed a brief seek­ing to exclude the state­ments attrib­uted to Celli­ni and oth­ers, on the basis that they would not be called as wit­ness­es and in Cellini’s case, he had nev­er even been inter­viewed by pros­e­cu­tors. . . .”

“Barack Oba­ma-Sub­plots of Oper­a­tion Board Games” by Eve­lyn Pringle; Scoop.co.nz; 4/21/2008.

5. Con­clud­ing the pro­gram and look­ing ahead to FTR #655, it is sig­nif­i­cant that Tony Rezko was intro­duced into Illi­nois state gov­ern­ment by Talat Oth­man, a long­time asso­ciate of both Georges Bush, a for­mer direc­tor of Harken Ener­gy (one of Bush’s failed ener­gy com­pa­nies), a pro­tege of the BCCI milieu and a direc­tor of Grover Norquist and Karl Rove’s Islam­ic Institute–the point of inter­face between the GOP and the Islamist ter­ror fund­ing appa­ra­tus in the Unit­ed States.

” . . . Rezko was intro­duced to state pol­i­tics and Ryan’s pre­de­ces­sor, Jim Edgar, by Talat Oth­man, a long­time fundrais­er for state and city gov­ern­ment offi­cials. . . .”

“Arabs in Chica­go Dis­cov­er Polit­i­cal Clout and Con­tro­ver­sy” by Ray Hana­nia; Arab Amer­i­can Media Ser­vices;6/8/2005.