FTR#‘s 1266 and 1267 Interviews #5 and #6 with Jim DiEugenio about “JFK Revisited”

These pro­grams con­tin­ue our series of inter­views with Jim DiEu­ge­nio about the Oliv­er Stone doc­u­men­tary JFK Revis­it­ed, for which Jim wrote the screen­play.

Yet anoth­er area in which JFK’s pol­i­cy out­look ran afoul of the pre­vail­ing wis­dom of the Cold War was with regard to the Con­go. A Bel­gian colony which was the vic­tim of geno­ci­dal poli­cies of King Leopold (esti­mates of the dead run as high as 8 mil­lion), the dia­mond and min­er­al-rich Con­go gained a frag­ile inde­pen­dence.

In Africa, as well, Kennedy under­stood the strug­gle of emerg­ing nations seek­ing free­dom from colo­nial dom­i­na­tion as falling out­side of and tran­scend­ing stereo­typed Cold War dynam­ics.

In the Con­go, the bru­tal­ly admin­is­tered Bel­gian rule had spawned a vig­or­ous inde­pen­dence move­ment crys­tal­lized around the charis­mat­ic Patrice Lumum­ba. Under­stand­ing of, and sym­pa­thet­ic to Lumum­ba and the ide­ol­o­gy and polit­i­cal forces embod­ied in him, Kennedy opposed the reac­tionary sta­tus quo favored by both Euro­pean allies like the Unit­ed King­dom and Bel­gium, as well as the Eisenhower/Dulles axis in the Unit­ed States.

In 1961, there was anoth­er assas­si­na­tion that over­lapped events lead­ing up to JFK’s killing. U.N. Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Dag Ham­marskjold was on the same page as JFK with regard to Con­golese inde­pen­dence from Bel­gium, nega­tion of the Bel­gian-spon­sored attempt at get­ting min­er­al-rich Katan­ga province to secede and was of the same mind as JFK with regard to assur­ing Patrice Lumum­ba’s sur­vival. 

Ham­marskjold’s 1961 death in a plane crash was not the acci­dent it was rep­re­sent­ed as being:

JFK Revis­it­ed: Through the Look­ing Glass by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [HC]; Copy­right 2022 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Intro­duc­tion Copy­right 2022 by Oliv­er Stone; ISBN 978–1‑5107–7287‑8; p. 105.

. . . . The pho­tos of Ham­marskjold show his body as the only one not burned or charred. And he had a play­ing card, report­ed­ly the ace of spades, stuffed into his shirt col­lar above the know in the tie. Now, due to Susan Williams’ book and new evi­dence offered by Desmond Tutu and the Union of South Africa’s Truth and Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion Com­mis­sion, there are con­tro­ver­sial doc­u­ment that indi­cate Allen Dulles was involved in the sab­o­tage of the plane. The project was called Oper­a­tion Celeste and was to be car­ried out through a secret white suprema­cist group called SAMIR.

Kennedy’s old men­tor Edmund Gul­lion advised JFK that Ham­marskjold’s death was not the acci­dent it was rep­re­sent­ed as being.

JFK Revis­it­ed: Through the Look­ing Glass by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [HC]; Copy­right 2022 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Intro­duc­tion Copy­right 2022 by Oliv­er Stone; ISBN 978–1‑5107–7287‑8; pp. 402–403.

. . . . Sus­pi­cions were every­where that there had been foul play. The first per­son on the scene was the US air attache. And there were bul­lets that he said were in the vic­tims includ­ing Ham­marskjold. And a close friend of Pres­i­dent Kennedy, Edmund Gul­lion, sent a cable home say­ing: Con­trary to the offi­cial expla­na­tion for this trag­ic inci­dent, this was an assas­si­na­tion . . . .

In the Con­go, LBJ reversed JFK’s pol­i­cy stance, and the cor­po­rate loot­ing of the Con­go result­ed under Gen­er­al Joseph Mobu­tu, him­self a ben­e­fi­cia­ry of the pira­cy.

LBJ also reversed JFK’s pol­i­cy toward Indone­sia.

In 1955, Sukarno host­ed a con­fer­ence of non-aligned nations that for­mal­ized and con­cretized a “Third Way” between East and West. This, along with Sukarno’s nation­al­ism of some Dutch indus­tri­al prop­er­ties, led the U.S. to try and over­throw Sukharno, which was attempt­ed in 1958.

Kennedy under­stood Sukarno’s point of view, and had planned a trip to Indone­sia in 1964 to forge a more con­struc­tive rela­tion­ship with Sukharno. Obvi­ous­ly, his mur­der in 1963 pre­clud­ed the trip.

In 1965, Sukarno was deposed in a bloody, CIA-aid­ed coup in which as many as a mil­lion peo­ple were killed.

Of par­tic­u­lar inter­est in con­nec­tion with Indone­sia, is the dis­po­si­tion of Freeport Sul­phur, a com­pa­ny that had enlist­ed the ser­vices of both Clay Shaw and David Fer­rie in an effort to cir­cum­vent lim­i­ta­tions on its oper­a­tions imposed by Cas­tro’s Cuba.

It should be not­ed that Freeport had set its cor­po­rate sights on a very lucra­tive pair of moun­tains in Indone­sia, both of which had enor­mous deposits of min­er­als, iron, cop­per, sil­ver and gold in par­tic­u­lar.

Cuba was an area of major con­flict between JFK and the Pow­ers That Be.

When JFK gave a green light to the attempt­ed over­throw of Cas­tro via the Bay of Pigs inva­sion, he had under­stood that the plan itself was des­tined to work.

In fact, Allen Dulles knew the plan as for­mu­lat­ed would fail, and expect­ed Kennedy to autho­rize the mil­i­tary to step in and neu­tral­ize Cas­tro.

Real­iz­ing that he had been lied to, JFK dis­missed Allen Dulles, Richard Bis­sell and Gen­er­al C.P. Cabell.

He also spoke of shat­ter­ing the CIA into a thou­sand pieces. It is grim­ly, mor­bid­ly iron­ic that it was Kennedy’s head that was shat­tered, and that he was “decap­i­tat­ed.”

Dur­ing the Cuban Mis­sile Cri­sis, JFK rebuffed the pres­sure from the Joint Chiefs of Staff to invade Cuba, there­by avoid­ing the con­fronta­tion with Sovi­et tac­ti­cal nuclear weapons that had been pro­vid­ed to Cas­tro, unbe­knownst to the U.S.

Opt­ing for a block­ade, Kennedy also estab­lished a quid-pro-quo with Niki­ta Khrushchev, agree­ing to remove U.S. nuclear mis­siles from Turkey.

This was fol­lowed by a num­ber of back-door diplo­mat­ic attempts at nor­mal­iz­ing rela­tions with Cuba.

At the moment that Cas­tro heard JFK had been killed, he was meet­ing with French jour­nal­ist Jean Daniel, who had func­tioned as one of those back-door diplo­mat­ic chan­nels to Cas­tro.

After dis­cus­sion of the “dual front” 531 Lafayette Place/544 Camp Street in New Orleans run by “pri­vate inves­ti­ga­tor” Guy Ban­is­ter, we review the alleged “left­ist” Lee Har­vey Oswald’s involve­ment with that orga­ni­za­tion and his appar­ent­ly con­trived alter­ca­tion with Car­los Bringuier, the anti-Cas­tro Cuban and mem­ber of the DRE, part of the CIA-spon­sored fronts oper­at­ing against Cas­tro.

As we have seen in past pro­grams, George Joan­nides direct­ed the DRE for CIA dur­ing Bringuier’s tenure with the orga­ni­za­tion. Researcher Jef­fer­son Mor­ley filed a FOIA suit against CIA to pre­cip­i­tate more dis­clo­sure about Joan­nides, who had been the Agen­cy’s liai­son with the House Select Com­mit­tee on Assas­si­na­tions.

Appel­late Court Judge Brett Kavanaugh cast a decid­ing vote negat­ing Mor­ley’s appeal.

Dis­cus­sion con­cludes with analy­sis of how two visu­al events keyed major events in the inves­ti­ga­tion of JFK’s assas­si­na­tion: a 1975 TV pro­gram, on which Ger­al­do Rivera–featuring come­di­an Dick Gre­go­ry and Robert Groden–aired the Zaprud­er film. The uproar fol­low­ing that led to the for­ma­tion of the House Select Com­mit­tee on Assas­si­na­tion.

The “crawl” at the end of Oliv­er Stone’s JFK, inform­ing the audi­ence that the HSCA had  clas­si­fied key doc­u­ments until 2029, gen­er­at­ing fur­ther out­rage and lead­ing to the for­ma­tion of the Assas­si­na­tion Records Review Board.

Latest Patreon Talk: Russian “Interference” in 2016 Election–A Dog That Won’t Hunt

Exem­pli­fy­ing the dis­in­for­ma­tion sur­round­ing Ukraine, Rus­sia et al is the remark­able charge that Putin/Russia influ­enced the out­come of the 2016 elec­tion. Hillary Clin­ton got almost three mil­lion more votes than Don­ald Trump. Putin/Russia did not cre­ate the elec­toral col­lege. Face­book posts from Rus­sia were 40,000 out of 3 tril­lion posts–a few hun­dreds of one per­cent of the posts in that peri­od. THAT influ­enced the elec­tion?!! Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca, Peter Thiel, Face­book, Palan­tir helped keep poten­tial Clin­ton vot­ers at home, tar­get­ing poten­tial Sanders vot­ers. Ukrain­ian tele­vi­sion anchor quotes Adolf Eich­mann ver­ba­tim in this video from UKRAINE 24. WFMU-FM is pod­cast­ing For The Record–You can sub­scribe to the pod­cast HERE. Mr. Emory emphat­i­cal­ly rec­om­mends that listeners/readers get the 32GB flash dri­ve con­tain­ing all of Mr. Emory’s 43 years on the air, plus a library of old anti-fas­cist books on easy-to-down­load PDF files.

“Sachsenhausen:” Bernie Sanders’ Neo-Liberal Buddy Jeffrey Sachs

We have not­ed Bernie Sanders’ many “inter­est­ing con­nec­tions” in–among oth­er programs–FTR #953. One of Sanders’ eco­nom­ic advis­ers dur­ing the 2016 cam­paign is now a mem­ber of the Sanders Insti­tute, hav­ing for­mer­ly been a major archi­tect of the eco­nom­ic dis­as­ter that befell post-Cold-War Rus­sia under Yeltsin. All of the con­tents of this web­site as of 12/19/2014–Dave Emory’s 37+ years of research and broadcasting–as well as hours of video­taped lec­tures are avail­able on a 32GB flash dri­ve. Dave offers his pro­grams and arti­cles for free–your sup­port is very much appre­ci­at­ed.

FTR #939 The Trumpenkampfverbande, Part 13: Unsettling In (German Ostpolitik, Part 4)

Con­tin­u­ing dis­cus­sion of the Trump admin­is­tra­tion as the trans­for­ma­tion of the Under­ground Reich into an above-ground mass move­ment, we return to the sub­ject of the sup­posed Russ­ian “hacks” dur­ing the elec­tion, Ger­man Ost­poli­tik and an appar­ent strug­gle between the Amer­i­can “Deep State” and the Trumpenkampfver­bande.

Cit­ing the exten­sive capa­bil­i­ties of the NSA, a group of vet­er­an intel­li­gence offi­cers has con­clud­ed that the “evi­dence” of Rus­sia hav­ing hacked the DNC is not cred­i­ble: ” . . . The var­i­ous ways in which usu­al­ly anony­mous spokes­peo­ple for U.S. intel­li­gence agen­cies are equiv­o­cat­ing – say­ing things like ‘our best guess’ or ‘our opin­ion’ or ‘our esti­mate’ etc. – shows that the emails alleged to have been ‘hacked’ can­not be traced across the net­work. Giv­en NSA’s exten­sive trace capa­bil­i­ty, we con­clude that DNC and HRC servers alleged to have been hacked were, in fact, not hacked. The evi­dence that should be there is absent; oth­er­wise, it would sure­ly be brought for­ward, since this could be done with­out any dan­ger to sources and meth­ods. Thus, we con­clude that the emails were leaked by an insid­er – as was the case with Edward Snow­den and Chelsea Man­ning. Such an insid­er could be any­one in a gov­ern­ment depart­ment or agency with access to NSA data­bas­es, or per­haps some­one with­in the DNC. . . .”

In the con­text of the high-pro­file hacks, the pro­gram reviews infor­ma­tion from pre­vi­ous dis­cus­sions in FTR #‘s 917, 923, 924, 925, 926 deal­ing with Wik­iLeaks, Trump’s dirty tricks oper­a­tive Roger Stone, Edward Snow­den, the DNC hack and the Shad­ow Bro­kers “non-hack;” and the “paint­ing of Oswald Red,” including:The fact that Trump’s dirty tricks oper­a­tive Roger Stone was in direct con­tact with Julian Assange pri­or to, and dur­ing, Wik­iLeaks’ pub­lish­ing of the e‑mails from DNC and John De Podesta;The fact that Stone promised an “Octo­ber Sur­prise” from Wik­iLeaks that would affect the cam­paign; The fact that avail­able evi­dence does NOT impli­cate the Rus­sians in the DNC hack at all; The fact that the Shad­ow Bro­kers access­ing of NSA hack­ing tech­nolo­gies was prob­a­bly not a hack at all, but a leak by an insid­er using a thumb dri­ve; Edward Snow­den’s sus­pi­cious and, frankly, damn­ing sup­port for the unten­able “the Rus­sians did it” inter­pre­ta­tion of the DNC pen­e­tra­tion and the Shad­ow Bro­kers “non-hack;” Snow­den’s curi­ous tweet issued after the DNC hack and just before the Shad­ow Bro­kers surfaced–Snowden said “It’s time,” which has nev­er been explained (we sus­pect that it may have been a sig­nal to release the ANT/TAO mate­r­i­al;) the fact that Wik­iLeaks asso­ciate Jacob Apple­baum, who appears to have assist­ed Snow­den’s flight from Hawaii to Hong Kong, is seen as a sus­pect in the Shad­ow Bro­kers “non-hack;” Apple­baum’s and Snow­den’s affil­i­a­tion with the CIA.

Next, the pro­gram high­lights the alle­ga­tion that a DNC insid­er leaked the e‑mails to Wik­iLeaks: “. . . . And, even though The New York Times and oth­er big news out­lets are report­ing as flat fact that Rus­sia hacked the Demo­c­ra­t­ic email accounts and gave the infor­ma­tion to Wik­iLeaks, for­mer British Ambas­sador Craig Mur­ray, a close asso­ciate of Wik­iLeaks founder Julian Assange, told the Lon­don Dai­ly Mail that he per­son­al­ly received the email data from a “dis­gust­ed” Demo­c­rat. [Might that have been Tul­si Gabbard?–D.E.] . . . Mur­ray added that his meet­ing was with an inter­me­di­ary for the Demo­c­ra­t­ic leak­er, not the leak­er direct­ly. [Might that have been Roger Stone?–D.E.]. . .”

In the con­text of a pos­si­ble Trump mole inside the DNC, pos­si­bly assist­ing the “hacks,” we high­light Tru­menkampfver­bande links to the for­mer DNC Deputy Chair­per­son Tul­si Gab­bard (D‑Hawaii) and to Naren­dra Mod­i’s BJP, a polit­i­cal front and cat’s paw for the Hin­du nationalist/fascist RSS. The salient points include:

Trump’s busi­ness links with mem­bers of Mod­i’s BJP. “. . . . Mr. Trump’s part­ner in the Trump Tow­er Mum­bai is the Lod­ha Group, found­ed by Man­gal Prab­hat Lod­ha, vice pres­i­dent of the Bharatiya Jana­ta Par­ty — cur­rent­ly the gov­ern­ing par­ty in Par­lia­ment — in Maha­rash­tra State. . . . His part­ner in an office com­plex in Gur­gaon, near New Del­hi, is IREO, whose man­ag­ing direc­tor, Lalit Goy­al, is the broth­er-in-law of a Bharatiya Jana­ta mem­ber of Par­lia­ment, Sud­han­shu Mit­tal. . . .”

a) Trump’s inter­view of Gab­bard for a pos­si­ble cab­i­net posi­tion.
b) Steven K. Ban­non’s affin­i­ty for Gab­bard: ” . . . . Stephen Ban­non, Trump’s chief strate­gist, report­ed­ly likes Gab­bard because of her stance on guns, refugees and Islam­ic extrem­ism . . .”
c) Ban­non’s strong affin­i­ty for Modi: ” . . . The campaign’s chief exec­u­tive, Stephen K. Ban­non, is a stu­dent of nation­al­ist move­ments. Mr. Ban­non is close to Nigel Farage, a cen­tral fig­ure in Britain’s move­ment to leave the Euro­pean Union, and he is an admir­er of India’s prime min­is­ter, Naren­dra Modi, a Hin­du nation­al­ist Mr. Ban­non has called ‘the Rea­gan of India.’ It may be pure coin­ci­dence that some of Mr. Trump’s words chan­nel the nation­al­is­tic and, some argue, anti-Mus­lim sen­ti­ments that Mr. Modi stoked as he rose to pow­er. But it is cer­tain­ly not coin­ci­den­tal that many of Mr. Trump’s biggest Hin­du sup­port­ers are also some of Mr. Modi’s most ardent back­ers. . . .”
d) Gab­bard’s asso­ci­a­tion with Modi and the BJP: “. . . . Tul­si Gab­bard, the first Hin­du Amer­i­can in the US Con­gress, called on vis­it­ing Indi­an Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Modi here Sun­day and pre­sent­ed him with a gin­ger flower gar­land from Hawaii. Gab­bard, a strong sup­port­er of Modi, is a Demo­c­rat Con­gress­woman from Hawaii. . . . She has also been involved in the plan­ning of Modi’s US vis­it and had last month met two BJP lead­ers Vijay Jol­ly and MP Rajyavard­han Rathore in that con­nec­tion. . . .”
e) Gab­bard’s asso­ci­a­tion with the RSS: ” . . . As she hob­nobbed with the Indi­an prime min­is­ter and for­eign min­is­ter among oth­ers, The Tele­graph, a Kolkata-based news­pa­per, called her “the Sangh’s mas­cot” in the US. The Sangh, a moniker for the Rashtriya Swayam­se­vak Sangh (RSS), is a right-wing hin­dut­va organ­i­sa­tion and the ide­o­log­i­cal guardian of the BJP par­ty that rules India now. . . .”

The FBI has weighed in on the “hacks,” opin­ing that it was Rus­sia try­ing to ele­vate Trump. If so, that would place the FBI and Rus­sia on the same page, as the bureau’s naked­ly par­ti­san behav­ior dur­ing the cam­paign is quite obvi­ous at this point. When the FBI sup­pos­ed­ly detect­ed Rus­sia hack­ing the DNC, it called the IT “Help Desk” and the call was treat­ed by the recep­tion­ist as a prank call. ” . . . So I was sur­prised to read in the New York Times that when the FBI dis­cov­ered the Russ­ian attack in Sep­tem­ber 2015, it failed to send even a sin­gle agent to warn senior Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Com­mit­tee offi­cials. Instead, mes­sages were left with the DNC IT ‘help desk.’ As a for­mer head of the FBI cyber divi­sion told the Times, this is a baf­fling deci­sion: ‘We are not talk­ing about an office that is in the mid­dle of the woods of Mon­tana.’ . . . ”

VICE News has filed a law­suit against the FBI request­ing infor­ma­tion about a num­ber of sub­jects which could prove very explo­sive IF the bureau divulges the full extent of the infor­ma­tion it has on the sub­jects. “ . . . The suit also seeks all FBI emails men­tion­ing Bill Clin­ton, Hillary Clin­ton, for­mer Clin­ton cam­paign vice chair Huma Abe­din, Abedin’s estranged hus­band Antho­ny Wein­er, Trump, for­mer New York City may­or Rudy Giu­liani, Trump advis­ers Corey Lewandows­ki, Roger Stone and Kellyanne Con­way, CNN com­men­ta­tor Jef­frey Lord, Fox News host Sean Han­ni­ty, or Fox News anchor Bret Baier, among oth­ers. . . . ”

The lat­ter part of the pro­gram high­lights a num­ber of top­ics that will be cov­ered at greater length in FTR #940.

Pro­gram High­lights Include:

a) Trump’s appoint­ment of anoth­er “Alt-Right” fig­ure (Stephen Miller) as a top advis­er.
b) The appar­ent role of Ukrain­ian fas­cists in gen­er­at­ing the “Rus­sia did it” dis­in­for­ma­tion about the DNC hack.
d) The Aus­tri­an Free­dom Par­ty’s net­work­ing with Trump Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Advis­er-des­ig­nate Michael Fly­nn and their sup­port for lift­ing Russ­ian sanc­tions.
e) Sec­re­tary of State-des­ig­nate Rex Tiller­son­’s oppo­si­tion to sanc­tions against Rus­sia.
f) The Bor­mann cap­i­tal net­work’s mas­sive hold­ings in Stan­dard Oil of New Jer­sey (Exxon, now Exxon Mobil.)
g) Indi­ca­tions that Ukrain­ian fas­cist net­works may be involved with the “Rus­sia did it” meme on the high-pro­file hacks.

FTR #936 The Making of Donald Trump (Top Banana Republic), Part 5

This fifth and final install­ment of the series ref­er­ences the sub­stance of an arti­cle that embod­ies the enor­mous and fun­da­men­tal flaw in our polit­i­cal and civic process: a poll short­ly before the elec­tion found that most of the prospec­tive vot­ers polled felt that Trump was more hon­est and trust­wor­thy than Hillary Clin­ton. As our read­ing of John­ston’s excel­lent book unfolds, the grotesque, spec­tac­u­lar­ly fal­la­cious char­ac­ter of this per­cep­tion will become uncom­fort­ably clear. “Don­ald Trump is cur­rent­ly track­ing as the more hon­est of the two pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates in a poll, although fact-check­ing of his state­ments dur­ing the cam­paign have shown he’s lied sev­er­al times. The lat­est ABC News/Washington Post track­ing poll reports that 46 per­cent of like­ly vot­ers believe he is the more hon­est and trust­wor­thy can­di­date, while 38 per­cent believed it was Hillary Clin­ton. This marks the biggest gap between the two can­di­dates in five ABC News/Washington Post polls that asked the ques­tion, begin­ning in May.”

In the pre­vi­ous pro­gram, we opined that we all, in a sense, are enrolled in Trump Uni­ver­si­ty. By the same token, we could all be said to be play­ing the board game Trump: The Game. ” . . . . Then there’s his Monop­oly-like board game. When Trump and exec­u­tives from Mil­ton-Bradley intro­duced Trump: The Game in 1989, the devel­op­er sur­prised every­one by declar­ing those roy­al­ties would go to char­i­ty, too. Mil­ton-Bradley took Trump at his word. It also fig­ured it might improve sales, which were weak, if peo­ple real­ized their pur­chas­es would not enrich a pre­sumed bil­lion­aire but go to char­i­ty. Its tele­vi­sion ads told poten­tial buy­ers: ‘Mr. Trump’s pro­ceeds from Trump: The Game will be donat­ed to char­i­ty.’ . . . Trump has said he made $808,000 and that the mon­ey was donat­ed to his Don­ald J. Trump Foun­da­tion. . . . At the time, I spent a day call­ing New York and New Jer­sey char­i­ties try­ing to find any dis­clo­sures of gifts made by Trump. . . . But call after call pro­duced noth­ing. . . .” (The Mak­ing of Don­ald Trump; p. 17.)

Trump appeared to have won over a major­i­ty of vot­ing mil­i­tary vet­er­ans and a poll of active-duty ser­vice mem­bers indi­cat­ed that most pre­ferred Trump. Trump him­self avoid­ed mil­i­tary ser­vice dur­ing the Viet­nam War. “. . . . Don­ald turned eigh­teen in 1964, when the death toll in Viet­nam was ris­ing fast. He got four stu­dent defer­ments and one med­ical defer­ment, after his doc­tor wrote that he had a bone spur in his foot. Which foot? a jour­nal­ist asked years lat­er. Trump said he could not recall. . . .” (The Mak­ing of Don­ald Trump; pp. 131–132.)

In the fall of 2015, Trump boy­cotted a GOP pri­ma­ry cam­paign debate because Meg­yn Kel­ly was to be the on-air host. Trump instead went to an event on the Bat­tle­ship Iowa muse­um to what he mis­rep­re­sent­ed as a major vet­er­ans orga­ni­za­tion. ” . . . . Trump instead went to the Bat­tle­ship Iowa, now a muse­um at anchor in Long Beach, Cal­i­for­nia, to deliv­er what his cam­paign said would be a major address on nation­al defense. Trump praised the spon­sor of the event, Vet­er­ans for a Strong Amer­i­ca, and told the audi­ence that ‘hun­dreds of thou­sands’ of peo­ple belonged to the orga­ni­za­tion. There were evi­dent­ly two relat­ed orga­ni­za­tions, both non­prof­its, though Trump and his host nev­er made that clear to the audi­ence on the ship or watch­ing on tele­vi­sion. One was a char­i­ty, the oth­er one of those dark mon­ey polit­i­cal groups that have expand­ed since the Supreme Court’s 2010 Cit­i­zens Unit­ed deci­sion, enabling mon­ey from undis­closed sources to influ­ence elec­tions. A quick inter­net check would revealed to the Trump cam­paign that the IRS had revoked the non­prof­it sta­tus of Vet­er­ans for a Strong Amer­i­ca due to their fail­ure to file required dis­clo­sure reports. A char­i­ty dis­clo­sure orga­ni­za­tion, Guidestar, report­ed that it had no record of any board of direc­tors, Every indi­ca­tion point­ed to Vet­er­ans for a Strong Amer­i­ca being a one-man enter­prise run by a South Dako­ta lawyer named Joel Arends, whose oper­a­tion was under inves­ti­ga­tion for sus­pect­ed elec­tion impro­pri­eties in Ari­zona and Texas. Reporters lat­er learned the orga­ni­za­tion had thir­ty dol­lars in the bank and debts ten times that size. None of this was in line with Trump’s pro­mo­tion of the group’s immense size, influ­ence, and good works. . . .” (The Mak­ing of Don­ald Trump; pp. 135–136.)

Next, the pro­gram high­lights how Trump pro­motes him­self and his projects using The Amer­i­can Acad­e­my of Hos­pi­tal­i­ty Sci­ences. Trump, his daugh­ter Ivan­ka, his son Don­ald, Jr., the chief oper­at­ing offi­cer of the Trump Orga­ni­za­tion (Don­ald Cala­mari) and Trump’s but­ler Antho­ny Senecal are major fig­ures in this orga­ni­za­tion. The main fig­ure in the orga­ni­za­tion is Joseph Cinque, aka “Joey No Socks” or “The Prep­py Don.” ” . . . If those sound like names that might be asso­ci­at­ed with a fig­ure involved in orga­nized crime, it’s because they are. New York police with a search war­rant knocked on the door of Cinque’s Park Avenue South apart­ment in 1989. Cinque declined to let them in. The police applied a bat­ter­ing ram. Inside the apart­ment they found a trove of stolen art, includ­ing two Marc Cha­gall prints val­ued at $40,000. they had been tak­en in an art gallery heist. Cinque made a deal to plead to a mis­de­meanor, but pros­e­cu­tors scrapped the plea bar­gain after Cinque was seen talk­ing to John Got­ti, the ‘dap­per don’ who became head of the Gam­bi­no crime fam­i­ly by arrang­ing the mur­der of his pre­de­ces­sor Paul Castellano–one of the secret own­ers of the com­pa­ny that sup­plied con­crete for many Trump build­ings.

“Got­ti told Cinque that he would ‘take care of the DA,’ an appar­ent ref­er­ence to Anne Hey­man, the pros­e­cu­tor who had offered the plea bar­gain. . . . Hey­man ordered a more thor­ough inves­ti­ga­tion of Cinque. She alleged that the inves­ti­ga­tion showed that Cinque ‘was deal­ing drugs out of his apart­ment and fenc­ing stolen art-work.’ Hey­man also said that Cinque’s apart­ment on Cen­tral Park South appeared to be a retail out­let for stolen cloth­ing, includ­ing Armani suits and silk shirts. In 1990, Cinque plead­ed guilty to a felony: receiv­ing stolen prop­er­ty. . . .” (The Mak­ing of Don­ald Trump; p. 158.)

Anoth­er inter­est­ing, close asso­ciate of Don­ald Trump was Felix Sat­ter, who changed the spelling of his name, adding an extra “T” to avoid being rec­og­nized on inter­net search­es. ” . . . ‘Sat­ter’s’ name appears with just one ‘T’ in a host of places. There’s the deed to his home for exam­ple. It is also spelled with only one ‘T’ on New York State court papers from his 1991 felony con­vic­tion for stab­bing a man in the face with the stem of a mar­gari­ta glass. The name Sater with one ‘T’ also appears on fed­er­al court papers in a $40 mil­lion orga­nized crime stock swin­dle he con­fessed to in 1998, a scheme that ben­e­fit­ed him as well as the Gen­ovese and Gam­bi­no crime fam­i­lies. The stock swin­dle involved fake stock bro­ker­age firms using high-pres­sure tac­tics to get naive peo­ple to buy worth­less shares from Sater and his mob friends. . . .” (The Mak­ing of Don­ald Trump; p. 162.)

Trump’s close asso­ciate Felix was able to escape seri­ous legal ret­ri­bu­tion by going to work for the CIA. ” . . . . There is every indi­ca­tion that the extra­or­di­nar­i­ly lenient treat­ment result­ed from Sater play­ing a get-out-of-jail free card. Short­ly before his secret guilty plea, Sater became a free­lance oper­a­tive of the Cen­tral Intel­li­gence Agency. One of his fel­low stock swindlers, Sal­va­tore Lau­ria, wrote a book about it. The Scor­pi­on and the Frog is described on its cov­er as ‘the true sto­ry of one man’s fraud­u­lent rise and fall n the Wall Street of the nineties.’ Accord­ing to Lauria–and the court files that have been unsealed–Sater helped the CIA buy small mis­siles before they got to ter­ror­ists. He also pro­vid­ed oth­er pur­port­ed nation­al secu­ri­ty ser­vices for a report­ed fee of $300,000. Sto­ries abound as to what else Sater may or may not have done in the are­na of nation­al secu­ri­ty. . . .” (The Mak­ing of Don­ald Trump; p. 165.)

The last text read­ing con­cludes with dis­cus­sion of Trump’s unsa­vory real estate deals. Lur­ing unwary buy­ers in with the pres­ti­gious Trump brand name, ‘The Don­ald” left a great many of them high and dry when the truth emerged about what was real­ly going on. In this sense, too, we are ALL investors in the Trump brand name, and like­ly to receive the same treat­ment as his unwary real estate cus­tomers.

A Baja Cal­i­for­nia (Mex­i­co) project is typ­i­cal of Trump’s method­ol­o­gy and oper­a­tions in this regard. ” . . . . A June 2007 newslet­ter noti­fied buy­ers that con­struc­tion was under­way. The next month, the Trump Baja News report­ed, ‘our new and excit­ed home­own­ers now are part of an elite group of vaca­tion home­own­ers who own prop­er­ty devel­oped by one of the most respect­ed names in real estate, Don­ald J. Trump.’ Three months lat­er, in Octo­ber, when Wall Street crashed under the weight of the tox­ic mort­gages and oth­er Baja real estate projects fal­tered, the same newslet­ter car­ried a mes­sage ‘From the desk of Ivan­ka Trump.’ Ivan­ka assured the buy­ers that their invest­ment was sound. ‘Though it may be rue that some of Baja’s devel­op­ments could slow down, these mar­ket con­di­tions sim­ply do not apply to Trump Ocean Resort–or any oth­er Trump devel­op­ment,’ she wrote.

“Two months lat­er, in Decem­ber 2007, the newslet­ter advised buy­ers of new­ly dis­cov­ered geo­log­i­cal prob­lems afflict­ing the build­ing site. A few months lat­er, in March 2008, anx­ious buy­ers received calls or let­ters. Con­struc­tion loans had been approved, would be fund­ed short­ly, and work would be under­way. This was nine months after buy­ers had been told in writ­ing that con­struc­tion had already begun. Still, con­struc­tion did not pro­ceed.

“All of these pro­mo­tions, sales pitch­es, and newslet­ter updates cre­at­ed the impres­sion that Trump was the builder and the devel­op­er, words he used. The buy­ers lat­er said they bought in because Trump was the devel­op­er or builder. That under­stand­ing then changed abrupt­ly.

“The worst news arrived two before Christ­mas 2008. What had been described as a part­ner­ship between ‘the Trump Orga­ni­za­tion, Don­ald J. Trump,’ and the oth­er peo­ple and com­pa­nies involved was described in a new way. Nei­ther Trump nor the Trump Orga­ni­za­tion were invest­ment part­ners in the Trump Ocean Resort. They were not the devel­op­ers, either. They had mere­ly licensed the use of the Trump name. . . .” (The Mak­ing of Don­ald Trump; pp. 169–170.)

It is grue­some­ly iron­ic that the bulk of Trump’s scam­ming revolves around his real estate empire. It was, of course, the col­lapse of the real estate mar­ket that led to the finan­cial col­lapse of 2008.

FTR #935 The Making of Donald Trump (Top Banana Republic), Part 4

This fourth pro­gram in a series excerpt­ing the book “The Mak­ing of Don­ald Trump” by David Cay John­ston begins by exam­in­ing Trump Uni­ver­si­ty, the fraud­u­lent edu­ca­tion­al insti­tu­tion that was the focal point of sev­er­al law­suits recent­ly set­tled by Don­ald Trump. (The Mak­ing of Don­ald Trump,; pp. 117–128.)

Mr. Emory feels that, in a sense, the case of Trump Uni­ver­si­ty is a micro­cosm for what Amer­i­ca will be under a Trump pres­i­den­cy. ” . . . . The tes­ti­mo­ny above all comes from a 2012 suit, but two oth­er law­suits claimed that the whole Trump Uni­ver­si­ty enter­prise was a fraud–a scam in which the des­per­ate and the gullible paid Trump about $40 mil­lion for what turned out to be high-pres­sure sales­man­ship. . . .” (The Mak­ing of Don­ald Trump,; pp. 120–121.)

In a very real sense, Trump’s pitch in a pro­mo­tion­al video embod­ies Trump as a pro­fes­sion­al, a per­son and a politi­cian: ” . . . ‘At Trump Uni­ver­si­ty, we teach suc­cess . . . . That’s what it’s all about–success. It’s going to hap­pen to you. We’re going to have pro­fes­sors and adjunct pro­fes­sors that are absolute­ly terrific–terrific peo­ple, ter­rif­ic brains, suc­cess­ful. We are going to have the best of the best. These are all peo­ple that are hand­picked by me.’ . . . . None of those state­ments were true. . . .” (The Mak­ing of Don­ald Trump,; pp. 117—118.)

Rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the oper­a­tions of this “uni­ver­si­ty” is Trump’s “fac­ul­ty.” ” . . . . Trump did not even hon­or his com­mit­ment to hand­pick the fac­ul­ty. In 2012, when Trump was sued for civ­il fraud in Cal­i­for­nia, attor­ney Rachel Jensen read the names of one fac­ul­ty mem­ber after anoth­er, dis­played pho­tographs of them, and offered video footage of fac­ul­ty at Trump Uni­ver­si­ty ‘live events.’ Trump, who com­plained that this line of ques­tion­ing was a waste of time, could not iden­ti­fy a sin­gle per­son. ‘Too many years ago . . . too many years ago . . . it’s ancient his­to­ry,’ he said. Some of these events had tak­en place few­er than two years ear­li­er. Again and again and again, Trump tes­ti­fied that he could not remem­ber. . . .” (The Mak­ing of Don­ald Trump,; p. 119.)

An inves­ti­ga­tion of Trump Uni­ver­si­ty in Texas had a reveal­ing polit­i­cal foot­note: ” . . . . To the sea­soned fraud inves­ti­ga­tors who com­piled the report, the case against Trump seemed iron­clad. The inves­ti­ga­tors con­clud­ed with the sug­ges­tion that Trump . . . . be named per­son­al­ly in a civ­il action suit alleg­ing decep­tive trade prac­tices. We know all this because John Owens, who retired in 2011 as chief deputy in the Texas attor­ney gen­er­al’s con­sumer pro­tec­tion unit made the inter­nal report pub­lic in 2016. The Texas attor­ney gen­er­al’s office, Owen­s’s for­mer employ­er, respond­ed with a let­ter cit­ing six laws Owens may have bro­ken in releas­ing the report and sug­gest­ing his law license might be revoked. . . . Greg Abbott, the Texas attor­ney gen­er­al, took no pub­lic action. . . . Abbott has since been elect­ed gov­er­nor. He endorsed Trump in 2016. . . . In 2013, three years after [assis­tant Texas attor­ney gen­er­al Rick] Berlin failed to per­suade Abbott to adopt his rec­om­men­da­tion to recov­er mon­ey for Texas con­sumers, Trump donat­ed $35,000 to Abbot­t’s cam­paign for gov­er­nor. . . .” (The Mak­ing of Don­ald Trump,; pp. 122–123.)

The Abbott-Trump rela­tion­ship mir­rors the high­ly sus­pi­cious con­tri­bu­tion Trump made to the reelec­tion cam­paign of Flori­da attor­ney gen­er­al Pam Bon­di, who dropped the inves­ti­ga­tion into Trump Uni­ver­si­ty in exchange for the “favor.”

As report­ed dur­ing the cam­paign, Trump’s con­tri­bu­tion was made from one of Trump’s char­i­ties, which are the focal point of Chap­ter 16 of John­ston’s book. (The Mak­ing of Don­ald Trump,; pp. 129–134.)

Enjoy­ing the sup­port of many vet­er­ans, accord­ing to polls, and, also accord­ing to polls, active duty mil­i­tary per­son­nel, Trump attempt­ed to use vet­er­ans as cam­paign props by donat­ing to them in vio­la­tion of reg­u­la­tions gov­ern­ing char­i­ta­ble dona­tions. (The Mak­ing of Don­ald Trump,; pp. 135–136.)

FTR #934 The Making of Donald Trump (Top Banana Republic), Part 3

For some weeks, we have been–and will be–reading most of the book into the record, to pro­vide peo­ple with a mea­sure against which to eval­u­ate not just “The Don­ald,” as his first wife Ivana called him, but our soci­ety, its insti­tu­tions and its cit­i­zens. We can’t rec­om­mend strong­ly enough that lis­ten­ers buy this book, read it and use what­ev­er means avail­able to spread the word about it. (We note that nei­ther Mr. Emory nor any of the sta­tions that air this pro­gram get mon­ey from this book, its pub­lish­er or author.)

This third install­ment of the series com­mences with a review the sub­stance of an arti­cle that embod­ies the enor­mous and fun­da­men­tal flaw in our polit­i­cal and civic process: a poll short­ly before the elec­tion found that most of the prospec­tive vot­ers polled felt that Trump was more hon­est and trust­wor­thy than Hillary Clin­ton. As our read­ing of John­ston’s excel­lent book unfolds, the grotesque, spec­tac­u­lar­ly fal­la­cious char­ac­ter of this per­cep­tion will become uncom­fort­ably clear. “Don­ald Trump is cur­rent­ly track­ing as the more hon­est of the two pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates in a poll, although fact-check­ing of his state­ments dur­ing the cam­paign have shown he’s lied sev­er­al times. The lat­est ABC News/Washington Post track­ing poll reports that 46 per­cent of like­ly vot­ers believe he is the more hon­est and trust­wor­thy can­di­date, while 38 per­cent believed it was Hillary Clin­ton. This marks the biggest gap between the two can­di­dates in five ABC News/Washington Post polls that asked the ques­tion, begin­ning in May.”

The pro­gram fea­tures a con­tin­u­a­tion of John­ston’s account of Trump’s “curi­ous” rela­tion­ship with con­vict­ed felon and drug deal­er Joey Weich­sel­baum. “Among the assort­ed crim­i­nals with whom Trump did busi­ness over more than three decades, his most mys­te­ri­ous deal­ings involved a drug traf­fick­er named Joseph Weich­sel­baum. Trump did unusu­al favors for the three-time felon, repeat­ed­ly putting his lucra­tive casi­no license at risk to help a major cocaine and mar­i­jua­na traf­fick­er for rea­sons that remain unfath­omable. . . .”

Dur­ing the cam­paign, Trump tar­get­ed dis­af­fect­ed, alien­at­ed blue-col­lar work­ers, chaf­ing under the effects of glob­al­iza­tion and lin­ger­ing dam­age from the finan­cial col­lapse of 2008. “The Don­ald” also, of course, made expelling ille­gal immi­grants a cor­ner­stone of his cam­paign. There could be no bet­ter bal­ance in which to hang the integri­ty of Pres­i­dent-elect Don­ald Trump than to exam­ine the chap­ter John­son titled “The Pol­ish Brigade.” (The Mak­ing of Don­ald Trump; pp. 69–76.)

When demol­ish­ing the old Bon­wit Teller build­ing in New York City to make way for one of his sig­na­ture projects, Trump not only broke a promise to sal­vage the valu­able art deco piece at the build­ing’s entrance (pro­vid­ing disin­gen­u­ous respons­es to crit­i­cism about this), but employed ille­gal Pol­ish immi­grants to dis­man­tle the struc­ture. The abuse to which Trump sub­ject­ed those immi­grants is strik­ing and bodes poor­ly for those ele­ments of “Mid­dle Amer­i­ca” who sup­port­ed him dur­ing the elec­tion.

The “Pol­ish Brigade” were not giv­en even ele­men­tary work­ing tools, nor basic safe­ty equip­ment such as hard hats. They worked long hours at very low pay under hor­ri­ble work­ing con­di­tions and were often not paid at all, until they threat­ened a top Trump assis­tant, Thomas Macari.

“Instead of hir­ing an expe­ri­enced demo­li­tion con­trac­tor, Trump chose Kaszy­c­ki & Sons Con­trac­tors, a win­dow wash­ing busi­ness owned by a Pol­ish emi­gre. Upward of two hun­dred men began demol­ish­ing the build­ing in mid­win­ter 1980. The men worked with­out hard hats. They lacked face­masks, even though asbestos–known to cause incur­able cancers–swirled all around them. They did­n’t have gog­gles to pro­tect their eyes from the bits of con­crete and steel that some­times flew through the air like bul­lets. The men did­n’t have pow­er tools either; they brought down the twelve-sto­ry build­ing with sledge­ham­mers. . . .

. . . . The demo­li­tion work­ers were not Amer­i­can cit­i­zens, but ‘had recent­ly arrived from Poland,’ a fed­er­al court lat­er deter­mined. The court also found that ‘they were undoc­u­ment­ed and worked ‘off the books.’ No pay­roll records were kept, no Social Secu­ri­ty or oth­er tax­es were with­held and they were not paid in accor­dance with wage laws. They were told they would be paid $4.00 or in some cas­es $5.00 an hour for work­ing 12-hour shifts sev­en days a week. In fact, they were paid irreg­u­lar­ly and incom­plete­ly.’ . . .

. . . . Fed up that their pay­checks kept bounc­ing, some of the work­ers cor­ralled Thomas Macari, Trump’s per­son­al rep­re­sen­ta­tive they showed him to the edge of one of the high­er floors and asked if he would like them to hang him over the side. The work­ers, like­ly hun­gry, demand­ed their pay. Oth­er­wise, no work.

When Macari told his boss what had hap­pened, Trump placed a pan­icked tele­phone call to Daniel Sullivan–a labor fix­er, FBI infor­mant, sus­pect in the dis­ap­pear­ance of Jim­my Hof­fa, and Trump’s per­son­al nego­tia­tor for the Grand Hyatt con­tract with the hotel work­ers’ union.

‘Don­ald told me he was hav­ing some dif­fi­cul­ties,’ Sul­li­van lat­er tes­ti­fied, ‘and he admit­ted to me that–seeking my advice–he had some ille­gal Pol­ish employ­ees on the job. . . .

. . . .There is no record of any fed­er­al, state, or city safe­ty inspec­tor fil­ing a report dur­ing the demo­li­tion. In a 1990 Tren­ton restau­rant inter­view. I asked Sul­li­van how a project of this size could have been erect­ed in the heart of Man­hat­tan with­out attract­ing gov­ern­ment job safe­ty inspec­tors. Sul­li­van just looked at me. When I widened my eyes to make clear that I want­ed an explic­it­ly answer, he said, ‘You know why.’ When I per­sist­ed, antic­i­pat­ing that Sul­li­van might spec­i­fy bribes to inspec­tors, he said that unions and con­crete sup­pli­ers were not the only areas where Trump’s lawyer, Roy Cohn, had influ­ence. . . . ” (The Mak­ing of Don­ald Trump; pp. 70–72.)

The text excerpts con­clude with a read­ing of most of chap­ter 10 of John­ston’s book, cov­er­ing how Trump’s esti­mates of his own net worth var­ied accord­ing to his mood at the time of the inquiry. This did not stop him from suing jour­nal­ist Tim O’Brien for alleged­ly mis-report­ing Trump’s worth. (The Mak­ing of Don­ald Trump; pp. 77–83.)

FTR #933 The Making of Donald Trump (Top Banana Republic), Part 2

This sec­ond install­ment of a series com­mences with a review the sub­stance of an arti­cle that embod­ies the enor­mous and fun­da­men­tal flaw in our polit­i­cal and civic process: a poll short­ly before the elec­tion found that most of the prospec­tive vot­ers polled felt that Trump was more hon­est and trust­wor­thy than Hillary Clin­ton.

As our read­ing of David Cay John­ston’s excel­lent book unfolds, the grotesque, spec­tac­u­lar­ly fal­la­cious char­ac­ter of this per­cep­tion will become uncom­fort­ably clear. “Don­ald Trump is cur­rent­ly track­ing as the more hon­est of the two pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates in a poll, although fact-check­ing of his state­ments dur­ing the cam­paign have shown he’s lied sev­er­al times. The lat­est ABC News/Washington Post track­ing poll reports that 46 per­cent of like­ly vot­ers believe he is the more hon­est and trust­wor­thy can­di­date, while 38 per­cent believed it was Hillary Clin­ton. This marks the biggest gap between the two can­di­dates in five ABC News/Washington Post polls that asked the ques­tion, begin­ning in May.”

In the first excerpt read into the record in this broad­cast, we fin­ish a chap­ter in which David Cay John­ston relates the gen­e­sis of Trump’s rela­tion­ship with Sen­a­tor Joe McCarthy’s right-hand man Roy Cohn. Hav­ing been sued by the Jus­tice Depart­ment because of his dis­crim­i­na­tion against peo­ple of col­or when rent­ing apart­ments in his prop­er­ties, Trump turned to Cohn. It was the begin­ning of a long rela­tion­ship between the long-time red-baiter and orga­nized crime apol­o­gist and “The Don­ald.” Trump and Cohn lost the case. Note Trump’s plac­ing of loy­al­ty above all else, a pri­or­i­ti­za­tion that John­ston cor­rect­ly char­ac­ter­izes in the ital­i­cize excerpt that fol­lows: ” . . . Elyse Gold­we­ber, the novice Jus­tice Depart­ment lawyer, told the court that one employ­ee who spoke to inves­ti­ga­tors was not being named because ‘he was afraid that the Trumps would have him ‘knocked off,’ or words to that effect’ for reveal­ing the tech­niques used to deny blacks and oth­er minori­ties. . . . In “The Art of the Deal,” Trump said he told Cohn, ‘I’d rather fight than fold, because as soon as you fold once you get the rep­u­ta­tion’ of some­one who set­tles case. But faced with a case in which nei­ther facts nor the law were on his side, Trump fold­ed and set­tled. . . .Trump han­dled the adverse set­tle­ment the way he had learned from his father: by spin­ning the news and offer­ing a sim­ple and quotable nar­ra­tive . . . Trump’s take­away from this ear­ly loss was not that times had changed and civ­il rights laws would be enforced. . . . He also learned to place loy­al­ty above all else. . . . That is, of course, the kind of per­spec­tive we expect from mob­sters, dic­ta­tors, and oth­ers whose pri­ma­ry regard is for unflinch­ing sup­port, not for alle­giance to truth or facts. . . .”

As not­ed in the pro­gram, on the day this was record­ed, Trump Uni­ver­si­ty set­tled in a mas­sive law­suit by stu­dents who had been defraud­ed by the “school.” Trump played it in the fash­ion he learned from his father and that he applied in the hous­ing dis­crim­i­na­tion suit, high­light­ed above: “. . . In The Art of the Deal, Trump said he told Cohn, ‘I’d rather fight than fold, because a soon as you fold once you get the rep­u­ta­tion’ of some­one who set­tles case. But faced with a case in which nei­ther facts nor the law were on his side, Trump fold­ed and set­tled. . . .Trump han­dled the adverse set­tle­ment the way he had leaned from his father: by spin­ning the news and offer­ing a sim­ple and quotable nar­ra­tive . . . .”

John­ston notes at the end of chap­ter 5 that Trump learned that hav­ing Cohn as his attor­ney also had oth­er ben­e­fits: ” . . . . Hir­ing him [Cohn] could ensure that his Man­hat­tan con­struc­tion projects moved smooth­ly. Among Cohn’s oth­er clients were two of Amer­i­ca’s most pow­er­ful Mafia fig­ures who con­trolled key unions attached to demo­li­tion and con­struc­tion in New York City.. . . In “The Art of the Deal,” Trump boasts that when he applied for a casi­no own­er’s license in 1981, he per­suad­ed the New Jer­sey attor­ney gen­er­al to lim­it the inves­ti­ga­tion of his back­ground. It was per­haps the most lucra­tive nego­ti­a­tion of Trump’s life, one that would embar­rass state offi­cials a decade lat­er when Trump’s involve­ment with mob­sters, mob asso­ciates, and swindlers became clear. . . . ”

Against the back­ground of Cohn’s mob con­nec­tions, John­ston sets forth Trump’s uti­liza­tion of those assets to real­ize his New York City real estate under­tak­ings. Remark­ably, such asso­ci­a­tions did not inter­dict Trump’s Atlantic City [New Jer­sey] gam­ing projects, which nor­mal­ly would have been pre­clud­ed by such links.

Exem­pli­fy­ing Trump’s orga­nized crime asso­ciates and the ser­vices they provided–courtesy of Roy Cohn–were Antho­ny “Fat Tony” Saler­no and Paul Castel­lano. ” . . . Trump bought his Man­hat­tan ready-mix [con­crete] from a com­pa­ny called S & A Con­crete. Mafia chief­tains Antho­ny “Fat Tony” Saler­no and Paul Castel­lano secret­ly owned the firm. S & A charged the inflat­ed prices that the LeFrak and Resnik fam­i­lies com­plained about, LeFrak to both laws enforce­ment and “The New York Times.” As [reporter Wayne] Bar­rett not­ed, by choos­ing to build with ready-mix con­crete rather than oth­er mate­ri­als, Trump put him­self ‘at the mer­cy of a legion of con­crete rack­e­teers.’ But hav­ing an ally in Roy Cohn mit­i­gat­ed Trump’s con­cerns. With Cohn as his fix­er, Trump had no wor­ries that the Mafia boss­es would have the unions stop work on Trump Tow­er; Saler­no and Castel­lano were Cohn’s clients. Indeed, when the cement work­ers struck in sum­mer 1982, the con­crete con­tin­ued to flow at Trump Tow­er. . . . Just as reveal­ing was Trump’s asso­ci­a­tion with John Cody, the cor­rupt head of Team­sters Local 282. Cody, under indict­ment when he ordered the city­wide strike in 1982, direct­ed that con­crete deliv­er­ies con­tin­ue to Trump Tow­er. Cody told Bar­rett, ‘Don­ald liked to deal with me through Roy Cohn. . . . ”

The excerpts read from John­ston’s remark­able tome con­clude with exam­i­na­tion of Trump’s rela­tion­ship with Joey Weich­sel­baum, a con­vict­ed drug traf­fick­er whose rela­tion­ship with Trump is high­ly unusu­al and opaque, even by “The Don­ald’s” stan­dards. “Among the assort­ed crim­i­nals with whom Trump did busi­ness over more than three decades, his most mys­te­ri­ous deal­ings involved a drug traf­fick­er named Joseph Weich­sel­baum. Trump did unusu­al favors for the three-time felon, repeat­ed­ly putting his lucra­tive casi­no license at risk to help a major cocaine and mar­i­jua­na traf­fick­er for rea­sons that remain unfath­omable. . . .”

Where­as Trump had many oth­er places to turn to for the var­i­ous aero­nau­ti­cal, auto­mo­tive and sup­ple­men­tal ser­vices Weichels­baum and his broth­er pro­vid­ed, Trump con­tin­ued to use them and pro­vid­ed them and their asso­ciates with remark­able “perks.”

With Trump poised to name a num­ber of Supreme Court jus­tices, we note that the venue of one of Weichels­baum’s cas­es was changed in a high­ly sus­pi­cious, reveal­ing and inaus­pi­cious man­ner. ” . . . When Weichels­baum made a deal with pros­e­cu­tors to plead guilty to one of the eigh­teen counts in the Cincin­nati case, some­thing very sus­pi­cious hap­pened. His case was trans­ferred out of Ohio for the guilty plea and the sen­tenc­ing. Log­i­cal­ly, the case might have gone to South Flori­da, where Brad­ford Motors [one of the Weich­sel­baum drug-traf­fick­ing fronts] was locat­ed, or to New York, where Weich­sel­baum lived. Indeed, that is exact­ly what Weich­sel­baum’s Ohio lawyer, Arnold Morel­li, sought in a Jan­u­ary 30, 1986 motion request­ing his case be trans­ferred to either Man­hat­tan or Mia­mi for ‘the con­ve­nience of human beings such as the defen­dant and wit­ness­es.’ Instead the Weichels­baum case was moved to New Jer­sey. There it was assigned to Judge Maryanne Trump Barry–Donald Trump’s old­er sis­ter.

Judge Bar­ry recused her­self three weeks lat­er, as judi­cial ethics required, but the mere act of remov­ing her­self from the case came with a pow­er­ful mes­sage: a sit­ting fed­er­al judge, as well as her hus­band (lawyer John Bar­ry) and fam­i­ly, repeat­ed­ly flew in heli­copters con­nect­ed to a major drug traf­fick­er. . . .When Judge Harold A. Ack­er­man replaced Trump’s sis­ter, Trump wrote him a let­ter seek­ing lenien­cy for Weich­sel­baum on the drug traf­fick­ing charge. Trump char­ac­ter­ize the defen­dant as ‘a cred­it to the com­mu­ni­ty’ and described Weich­sel­baum as ‘con­sci­en­tious, forth­right and dili­gent’ in his deal­ings with the Trump Plaza and Trump’s Cas­tle casi­nos. When asked about the let­ter under oath in a pri­vate 1990 meet­ing with New Jer­sey Divi­sion of Gam­ing Enforce­ment lawyers, Trump tes­ti­fied that he could not recall whether ‘he had writ­ten any let­ters of ref­er­ence to the fed­er­al judge who sen­tenced Weich­sel­baum.’ Sub­se­quent­ly, the divi­sion obtained such a let­ter, and Trump acknowl­edged that it bore his sig­na­ture. . . .”

FTR #932 The Making of Donald Trump (Top Banana Republic), Part 1

Ear­li­er in 2016, award-win­ning jour­nal­ist David Cay John­ston pub­lished a very well-writ­ten and researched, yet rel­a­tive­ly short and com­pact biog­ra­phy of Don­ald Trump–The Mak­ing of Don­ald Trump. For some weeks, we will be read­ing most of the book into the record, to pro­vide peo­ple with a mea­sure against which to eval­u­ate not just “The Don­ald,” as his first wife Ivana called him, but our soci­ety, its insti­tu­tions and its cit­i­zens. We can’t rec­om­mend strong­ly enough that lis­ten­ers buy this book, read it and use what­ev­er means avail­able to spread the word about it.

This first install­ment of the series com­mences with the read­ing of a poem by Robin­son Jef­fers, “Be Angry at the Sun,” which encom­pass­es Mr. Emory’s feel­ings about the recent elec­tion, as well as the peo­ple and insti­tu­tions that have pre­cip­i­tat­ed this event–one that fig­ures to be dev­as­tat­ing in its man­i­fes­ta­tions.

Fol­low­ing pre­sen­ta­tion of the Jef­fers poem, we exam­ine an arti­cle that embod­ies the enor­mous and fun­da­men­tal flaw in our polit­i­cal and civic process: a poll short­ly before the elec­tion found that most of the prospec­tive vot­ers polled felt that Trump was more hon­est and trust­wor­thy than Hillary Clin­ton. As our read­ing of John­ston’s excel­lent book unfolds, the grotesque, spec­tac­u­lar­ly fal­la­cious char­ac­ter of this per­cep­tion will become uncom­fort­ably clear. “Don­ald Trump is cur­rent­ly track­ing as the more hon­est of the two pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates in a poll, although fact-check­ing of his state­ments dur­ing the cam­paign have shown he’s lied sev­er­al times. The lat­est ABC News/Washington Post track­ing poll reports that 46 per­cent of like­ly vot­ers believe he is the more hon­est and trust­wor­thy can­di­date, while 38 per­cent believed it was Hillary Clin­ton. This marks the biggest gap between the two can­di­dates in five ABC News/Washington Post polls that asked the ques­tion, begin­ning in May.”

We begin by not­ing that Trump’s father net­worked with an orga­nized crime fig­ure named Willie Tomasel­lo, antic­i­pat­ing Trump’s own use of orga­nized crime fig­ures to fur­ther his com­mer­cial under­tak­ings. And Hillary Clin­ton is viewed as less hon­est than Trump!

Next, we note Trump’s ram­bling, igno­rant and inar­tic­u­late response to a ques­tion from con­ser­v­a­tive talk show host Hugh Hewitt about which ele­ment of the nuclear tri­ad he felt was most impor­tant. (The nuclear tri­ad con­sists of the three vehi­cles for deliv­er­ing nuclear weapons: bomb­ing air­craft, seaborne nuclear missiles–primarily sub­ma­rine-launched weapons–and land-based nuclear mis­siles.) Trump clear­ly had no idea what the nuclear tri­ad was, and could­n’t come close to doing jus­tice to the top­ic. “. . . . Well, first of all, I think we need some­body absolute­ly that we can trust. . . the pow­er is so mas­sive that we can’t just leave areas that fifty years ago or sev­en­ty-five years ago we would­n’t care [about]. It was hand-to-hand com­bat. . . I think–I think, for me, nuclear is just the pow­er; the dev­as­ta­tion is very impor­tant to me. . . . I think one of the most impor­tant things that we have to wor­ry about is nuclear gen­er­al­ly speak­ing. . . . The pow­er of nuclear, the pow­er of the weapons that we have today–and that is, by the way, the deal with Iran–the con­cept of it is so impor­tant that you have to make a good deal and what they should have done is that they should have dou­bled up and tripled up the sanc­tions. . . . ”

thinkbign­kick­ass­We then note Trump’s fun­da­men­tal igno­rance of busi­ness the­o­ry, his pre­tens­es to the con­trary notwith­stand­ing. ” ‘Are you famil­iar with the con­cept of net present val­ue?’ lawyer Andrew Ceres­ney asked. [This is a basic tenet of busi­ness, as famil­iar to grad­u­ate stu­dents of busi­ness as 2 + 2, as John­son says] ‘The con­cept of net present val­ue to me,’ Trump replied, ‘would be the val­ue of the land cur­rent­ly after debt. Well, to me, the word ‘net’ is an inter­est­ing word. It’s really–the word ‘val­ue’ is the impor­tant word. If you have an asset that you can do oth­er things with but you choose to do them–I haven’t cho­sen to do that. . . .”

Enter­ing into the meat of John­ston’s for­mi­da­ble text, the broad­cast high­lights a ram­bling, vul­gar, dis­or­ga­nized moti­va­tion­al talk he gave in Col­orado, in the com­pa­ny of a “con­vict­ed felon and swindler” named Felix Sater. In addi­tion to the inad­e­quate nature of the pre­sen­ta­tion itself, the val­ues Trump expressed are not to be over­looked.

Trump under­scored how much he dis­re­spect­ed “losers” and his belief in vengeance. Of pri­ma­ry sig­nif­i­cance in this con­text is his anec­dote about a for­mer employ­ee who was fired because she would­n’t do some­thing she felt was uneth­i­cal.

Attack­ing actress/comedian Rosie O’Don­nell, he high­light­ed his dis­taste for her phys­i­cal appear­ance in crude, vul­gar and fun­da­men­tal­ly ado­les­cent lan­guage.

Author John­ston notes that Trump stressed dur­ing his cam­paign that he was a devout Chris­t­ian, and yet his belief in “vengeance uber alles” is in fun­da­men­tal con­flict with Bib­li­cal teach­ing.

In the next chap­ter of the book, David Cay John­ston illus­trates how Trump prac­tices what he preach­es. When his nephew Fred Trump III filed suit after hav­ing been all but exclud­ed from Fred Jr.‘s will, Don­ald Trump saw to it that Fred’s son William, who had been borne with seri­ous health prob­lems, was pre­vent­ed from obtain­ing bad­ly need­ed med­ical care under the fam­i­ly med­ical pro­gram.

This placed young William’s life in jeop­ardy.

In the last excerpt read into the record in this broad­cast, David Cay John­ston relates the gen­e­sis of Trump’s rela­tion­ship with Sen­a­tor Joe McCarthy’s right-hand man Roy Cohn. Hav­ing been sued by the Jus­tice Depart­ment because of his dis­crim­i­na­tion against peo­ple of col­or when rent­ing apart­ments in his prop­er­ties, Trump turned to Cohn. It was the begin­ning of a long rela­tion­ship between the long-time red-baiter and orga­nized crime apol­o­gist and “The Don­ald.” Trump and Cohn lost the case.

FTR #930 The Trumpenkampfverbande, Part 9: Alfa Males, Part 3 (German Ostpolitik, Part 3)

With the (jus­ti­fi­able) out­rage swirling around FBI direc­tor (and Mitt Rom­ney backer) James Comey’s pub­lic dis­cus­sion of the dis­cov­ery of more of Hillary Clin­ton’s e‑mails hav­ing been dis­cov­ered, anoth­er elec­tion-relat­ed inves­ti­ga­tion has gone large­ly unex­am­ined. Indeed, the impor­tance of the inves­ti­ga­tion has been down­played.

Com­put­er experts dis­cov­ered a link between a serv­er reg­is­tered to the Trump orga­ni­za­tion and two servers reg­is­tered to the Alfa Bank in Moscow, a bank that is part of the Alfa con­glom­er­ate dis­cussed in FTR #‘s 530 and 573.

In the Foer piece, and in attempt­ed dis­cred­it­ing arti­cles of same, it is appar­ent that the inves­ti­ga­tors do not under­stand the nature of the enti­ty they are inves­ti­gat­ing. The jour­nal­is­tic “spin” put on Alfa in the cov­er­age is “Russia/Putin/Kremlin” new Cold War con­text. Alfa is very, very dif­fer­ent.

In FTR #‘s 530, 573 we examnined the nature of Alfa’s his­to­ry, oper­a­tions and insti­tu­tion­al and eco­nom­ic foun­da­tions. It is any­thing BUT “Kremlin/Putin/Russia.”

It appears to be Under­ground Reich, all the way, with evi­den­tiary trib­u­taries run­ning in the direc­tion of: the Iran-Con­tra scan­dal; the Iraq­gate scan­dal; the oil-for-food scam vis a vis Iraq; malfeasanace by a coterie of GOP big­wigs includ­ing Dick Cheney and oth­ers close to George W. Bush, and Haley Bar­bour; mon­ey-laun­der­ing by pow­er­ful inter­na­tion­al drug syn­di­cates; Chechen war­lords and drug-traf­fick­ing syn­di­cates; the Roy­al fam­i­ly of Liecht­en­stein; the Bank al-Taqwa (which helped finance al-Qae­da); the Marc Rich oper­a­tions; East­ern Euro­pean and Russ­ian asso­ciates of Wolf­gang Bohringer, one of Mohamed Atta’s close asso­ciates in South Flori­da; and the Carl Duis­berg Fel­low­ship, which brought Mohamed Atta to Ger­many from Egypt and may have helped him into the U.S.

The pro­gram high­lights major aspects of the inves­ti­ga­tion into the Alfa/Trump link:

The Trump/Alfa link was not a mal­ware attack, as some of the com­put­er sci­en­tists ini­tial­ly thought: ” . . . . The researchers quick­ly dis­missed their ini­tial fear that the logs rep­re­sent­ed a mal­ware attack. The com­mu­ni­ca­tion wasn’t the work of bots. The irreg­u­lar pat­tern of serv­er lookups actu­al­ly resem­bled the pat­tern of human conversation—conversations that began dur­ing office hours in New York and con­tin­ued dur­ing office hours in Moscow. It dawned on the researchers that this wasn’t an attack, but a sus­tained rela­tion­ship between a serv­er reg­is­tered to the Trump Orga­ni­za­tion and two servers reg­is­tered to an enti­ty called Alfa Bank. . . .”

The set-up was high­ly unusu­al: ” . . . . The researchers had ini­tial­ly stum­bled in their diag­no­sis because of the odd con­fig­u­ra­tion of Trump’s serv­er. ‘I’ve nev­er seen a serv­er set up like that,’ says Christo­pher Davis, who runs the cyber­se­cu­ri­ty firm HYAS InfoS­ec Inc. and won a FBI Direc­tor Award for Excel­lence for his work track­ing down the authors of one of the world’s nas­ti­est bot­net attacks. ‘It looked weird, and it didn’t pass the sniff test.’ The serv­er was first reg­is­tered to Trump’s busi­ness in 2009 and was set up to run con­sumer mar­ket­ing cam­paigns. It had a his­to­ry of send­ing mass emails on behalf of Trump-brand­ed prop­er­ties and prod­ucts. Researchers were ulti­mate­ly con­vinced that the serv­er indeed belonged to Trump. (Click here to see the server’s reg­is­tra­tion record.) But now this capa­cious serv­er han­dled a strange­ly small load of traf­fic, such a small load that it would be hard for a com­pa­ny to jus­ti­fy the expense and trou­ble it would take to main­tain it. ‘I get more mail in a day than the serv­er han­dled,’ Davis says. . . .”
The arti­cle details more unusu­al aspects of the link: ” . . . . That wasn’t the only odd­i­ty. When the researchers pinged the serv­er, they received error mes­sages. They con­clud­ed that the serv­er was set to accept only incom­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion from a very small hand­ful of IP address­es. . . . Eighty-sev­en per­cent of the DNS lookups involved the two Alfa Bank servers. ‘It’s pret­ty clear that it’s not an open mail serv­er,’ Camp told me. ‘These orga­ni­za­tions are com­mu­ni­cat­ing in a way designed to block oth­er peo­ple out.’ . . . .”

Paul Vixie–one of the pre­mier experts in the field–felt the con­nec­tion was high­ly unusu­al: ” . . . . Ear­li­er this month, the group of com­put­er sci­en­tists passed the logs to Paul Vix­ie. In the world of DNS experts, there’s no high­er author­i­ty. Vix­ie wrote cen­tral strands of the DNS code that makes the inter­net work. After study­ing the logs, he con­clud­ed, ‘The par­ties were com­mu­ni­cat­ing in a secre­tive fash­ion. The oper­a­tive word is secre­tive. This is more akin to what crim­i­nal syn­di­cates do if they are putting togeth­er a project.’ Put dif­fer­ent­ly, the logs sug­gest­ed that Trump and Alfa had con­fig­ured some­thing like a dig­i­tal hot­line con­nect­ing the two enti­ties, shut­ting out the rest of the world, and designed to obscure its own exis­tence. . . .”

The avail­able evi­dence indi­cates that the hookup indi­cat­ed “human-lev­el com­mu­ni­ca­tion”: ” . . . I put the ques­tion of what kind of activ­i­ty the logs record­ed to the Uni­ver­si­ty of California’s Nicholas Weaver, anoth­er com­put­er sci­en­tist not involved in com­pil­ing the logs. ‘I can’t attest to the logs them­selves,’ he told me, ‘but assum­ing they are legit­i­mate they do indi­cate effec­tive­ly human-lev­el com­mu­ni­ca­tion.’ . . . ”

More about the nature of the com­mu­ni­ca­tion, from the sci­en­tist using the code-name “Tea Leaves”: ” . . . . Tea Leaves and his col­leagues plot­ted the data from the logs on a time­line. What it illus­trat­ed was sug­ges­tive: The con­ver­sa­tion between the Trump and Alfa servers appeared to fol­low the con­tours of polit­i­cal hap­pen­ings in the Unit­ed States. ‘At elec­tion-relat­ed moments, the traf­fic peaked,’ accord­ing to Camp. There were con­sid­er­ably more DNS lookups, for instance, dur­ing the two con­ven­tions. . . .”

The sci­en­tists attempt­ed to get the pub­lic to pay atten­tion to their inves­ti­ga­tion and New York Times writ­ers turned their atten­tion to the case: ” . . . In Sep­tem­ber, the sci­en­tists tried to get the pub­lic to pay atten­tion to their data. One of them post­ed a link to the logs in a Red­dit thread. Around the same time, the New York Times’ Eric Licht­blau and Steven Lee Myers began chas­ing the sto­ry.* (They are still pur­su­ing it.) Licht­blau met with a Wash­ing­ton rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Alfa Bank on Sept. 21, and the bank denied hav­ing any con­nec­tion to Trump. . . .”

Things got “inter­est­ing” after that. Accord­ing to the com­put­er sci­en­tists, the Trump Orga­ni­za­tion shut down the serv­er! As the bril­liant Berke­ley researcher Peter Dale Scott not­ed, in a dif­fer­ent con­text, “The cov­er-up obvi­ates the con­spir­a­cy. ” . . . . In Sep­tem­ber, the sci­en­tists tried to get the pub­lic to pay atten­tion to their data. One of them post­ed a link to the logs in a Red­dit thread. Around the same time, the New York Times’ Eric Licht­blau and Steven Lee Myers began chas­ing the sto­ry.* (They are still pur­su­ing it.) Licht­blau met with a Wash­ing­ton rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Alfa Bank on Sept. 21, and the bank denied hav­ing any con­nec­tion to Trump. . . . The com­put­er sci­en­tists believe there was one log­i­cal con­clu­sion to be drawn: The Trump Orga­ni­za­tion shut down the serv­er after Alfa was told that the Times might expose the con­nec­tion. Weaver told me the Trump domain was ‘very slop­pi­ly removed.’ Or as anoth­er of the researchers put it, it looked like ‘the knee was hit in Moscow, the leg kicked in New York.’. . . . Four days lat­er, on Sept. 27, the Trump Orga­ni­za­tion cre­at­ed a new host name, trump1.contact-client.com, which enabled com­mu­ni­ca­tion to the very same serv­er via a dif­fer­ent route. When a new host name is cre­at­ed, the first com­mu­ni­ca­tion with it is nev­er ran­dom. To reach the serv­er after the reset­ting of the host name, the sender of the first inbound mail has to first learn of the name some­how. It’s sim­ply impos­si­ble to ran­dom­ly reach a renamed serv­er. ‘That par­ty had to have some kind of out­bound mes­sage through SMS, phone, or some non­in­ter­net chan­nel they used to com­mu­ni­cate [the new con­fig­u­ra­tion],’ Paul Vix­ie told me. The first attempt to look up the revised host name came from Alfa Bank. ‘If this was a pub­lic serv­er, we would have seen oth­er traces,’ Vix­ie says. ‘The only look-ups came from this par­tic­u­lar source.‘According to Vix­ie and oth­ers, the new host name may have rep­re­sent­ed an attempt to estab­lish a new chan­nel of com­mu­ni­ca­tion. But media inquiries into the nature of Trump’s rela­tion­ship with Alfa Bank, which sug­gest­ed that their com­mu­ni­ca­tions were being mon­i­tored, may have deterred the par­ties from using it. Soon after the New York Times began to ask ques­tions, the traf­fic between the servers stopped cold. . . .”

Not sur­pris­ing­ly, the FBI has dis­missed the rel­e­vance of the com­put­er link.

This dis­missal comes against the back­ground of sev­er­al late-break­ing devel­op­ments:

The unsuc­cess­ful attempt by Alfa sub­sidiary Crown Resources to buy Marc Rich’s com­modi­ties firm: ” . . . A deal to sell the Swiss-based com­modi­ties oper­a­tion of for­mer U.S. fugi­tive financier Marc Rich to Rus­sia-owned ener­gy trad­ing group Crown Resources is off. . . . Crown is owned by the Alfa Group con­glom­er­ate. . . . .”

The sub­se­quent suc­cess­ful attempt by Alfa play­er Mikhail Frid­man to pur­chase the Marc Rich firm: ” . . . Mikhail Frid­man: ‘Defen­dant Mikhail Frid­man cur­rent­ly serves as Chair­man of the Board of Direc­tors of co-con­spir­a­tor Alfa Bank and as Chair­man of the Board of Direc­tors of Defen­dant Con­sor­tium Alfa Group. Frid­man fur­ther served on the Board of Vim­pel­Com, a NYSE com­pa­ny, and has con­trol over Gold­en Tele­com, a NASDAQ com­pa­ny ... pur­chased the Unit­ed States trad­ing firm owned by Amer­i­can, Mark Rich, the one time com­modi­ties baron par­doned by Pres­i­dent Clin­ton with much con­tro­ver­sy. . . .”

The FBI’s long-dor­mant Twit­ter account began tweet­ing files about Bill Clin­ton’s par­don of Marc Rich, short­ly after the offi­cial dis­missal of inves­ti­ga­tions into the Alfa/Trump link: ” . . . . Now, a new inter­a­gency mys­tery is rais­ing ques­tions about whether the F.B.I. has become politi­cized, just days before the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. On Sun­day, a long-dor­mant F.B.I. Twit­ter account sud­den­ly sprung to life, blast­ing out a series of links to case files that cast the Clin­tons in a decid­ed­ly neg­a­tive light. . . . Then, on Tues­day, the “FBI Records Vault” account—which had not tweet­ed at all between Octo­ber 2015 and Sunday—published a link to records relat­ed to the 15-year-old, long-closed inves­ti­ga­tion into for­mer Pres­i­dent Bill Clinton’s par­don­ing of one­time com­modi­ties trad­er turned fugi­tive Marc Rich. The post, which was quick­ly retweet­ed thou­sands of times, links to a heav­i­ly redact­ed doc­u­ment that repeat­ed­ly ref­er­ences the agency’s “Pub­lic Cor­rup­tion” unit—less-than-ideal optics for Hillary Clin­ton, who has spent her entire cam­paign fight­ing her image as a cor­rupt politi­cian. . . .”

FBI Direc­tor James Comey was in charge of the orig­i­nal Marc Rich inves­ti­ga­tion and the par­don of Rich by Bill Clin­ton. Is there a con­nec­tion between the offi­cial dis­missal of the inves­ti­ga­tion into the Alfa/Trump link by the FBI, the tweet­ing by the FBI of the files on the Clin­ton par­don of Marc Rich and the fact that it was Comey who presided over the Marc Rich inves­ti­ga­tions? ” . . . . In 2002, Comey, then a fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tor, took over an inves­ti­ga­tion into Pres­i­dent Bill Clin­ton’s 2001 par­don of financier Marc Rich, who had been indict­ed on a laun­dry list of charges before flee­ing the coun­try. The deci­sion set off a polit­i­cal firestorm focused on accu­sa­tions that Rich’s ex-wife Denise made dona­tions to the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty, the Clin­ton Library and Hillary Clin­ton’s 2000 Sen­ate cam­paign as part of a plan to get Rich off the hook. Comey ulti­mate­ly decid­ed not to pur­sue the case. The kick­er: Comey him­self had over­seen Rich’s pros­e­cu­tion between 1987 and 1993. . . .”

Pro­gram High­lights Include: details of the Carl Duis­berg Soci­ety’s links to Atta and to major Ger­man cor­po­ra­tions; dis­cus­sion of the Alfa Fel­lowhip against the back­ground of Ger­man Ost­poli­tik dis­cussed in FTR #‘s 918 and 919; detailed analy­sis of Vik­tor Kozeny asso­ciates Frid­man and (Pyotr) Aven (Kozeny employed Bohringer as a pilot); a sum­ma­ry analy­sis of the major points in FTR #‘s 530 and 573.