The example of Frank Wisner, Jr. shows how the National Security State only benefits the well-off.

[Octafish]

Like permanent wars and a fiscal policy fixed to further enrich the already rich, America's foreign policy works to benefit the connected crony class at the expense of the nation as a whole. That is most un-democratic and, in the days before the figurehead of greed Ronnie Reagan assumed office thanks to the Ayatollah, most un-American.

Frank G. Wisner – Portrait of a “Fixer”

by Beatrice Edwards on February 02, 2011 ( The Whistleblogger / 2010 )

Every once in a while during a crisis, the mask of ‘democracy’ slips off the face of US foreign policy, and we see how the federal government really works at its highest levels, using its heaviest hitters. Frank G. Wisner is just such a cleanup batter. His mala fides were on display this morning in the press, as an envoy to teetering Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak from US President Barack Obama, who must salvage US ‘interests’ as one of the West’s favorite and most expensive regimes in the Middle East falls apart.

Wisner is exactly what the rest of the world thinks of as the US government, and his résumé explains why popular movements abroad try to steer clear of the American Embassy in their capitals. When a Third World situation gets tricky, and one of our allied dictators, such as Mubarak, faces charges of corruption, authoritarianism and human rights violations, Wisner is the man to call. He can mange the situation by speaking to the tired old monster “as a friend,” and showing him the exit.

SNIP...

As Ambassador to Egypt, Wisner became close friends with Shafik Gabr, the billionaire Chairman of ARTOC investments who partnered with Viktor Kozeny, a.k.a. “The Pirate of Prague.” Kozeny earned his moniker for ripping off the population of the Czech Republic with bogus privatization schemes in the early 1990s, netting roughly $1 billion for himself and his closest cronies. Gabr made a fortune with Kozeny in these endeavors.

While posted to the Philippines (1991-92), Wisner backed Enron’s negotiating position with the government for contracts to manage two power plants at Subic Bay. When he left his post in 1992, Enron had won the deal and took over the plants in early 1993. From there, the Ambassador took a short break and then moved on to India, where he secured additional lucrative deals for Enron. According to Vijay Prashad, in his book Fat Cats and Running Dogs, Wisner went so far as to boycott the "India Power '96” energy summit, although he was scheduled to deliver a speech there in order to pressure the Indian government to come through for Enron. After it seemed that Enron's place was secure there, Wisner left India in 1997 and joined the board of an Enron subsidiary.

Because board membership is not typically a full-time job, Wisner was also at the time the Vice Chairman for External Affairs at AIG. Among other accomplishments, he was largely responsible for pushing the Indian government in the 2000s to open the national insurance sector to foreign investment (i.e., AIG).

CONTINUED w LINKS...

http://www.whistleblower.org/blog/31-2010/973-frank-g-wisner--portrait-of-a-fixer

Thanks to the conservatives and their henchmen, modern U.S. diplomacy fuses inside information, a mad rush for strategic resources and the demand for state secrecy. Nice work, if you can get it. There really is nothing like the pirate sector.

[leveymg]

1. Recced for the Pirate Sector and Absolut Capitalism.

Bottoms up!

[Octafish]

2. The Have-Mores started somewhere.

Old hat for you, leveymg. For those wondering how we got here, good info 'n' links from Income Inequality

"You can have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, or democracy, but you cannot have both." - Louis Brandeis

"The richest 1 percent of Americans now take home almost 24 percent of income, up from almost 9 percent in 1976. As Timothy Noah of slate noted in an excellent series on inequality, the United States now arguably has a more unequal distribution of wealth than traditional banana republics like Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Guyana." Nicholas D. Kristof, New York Times 11/7/2010

"Economists who say we should relegate questions about inequality to philosophers often advocate policies, like tax cuts for the wealthy, that increase inequality substantially. That greater inequality causes real harm is beyond doubt." Robert H. Frank, New York Times, 10/17/2010

"... high levels of inequality strain the bonds that hold us together as a society. There has been a long-term downward trend in the extent to which Americans trust either the government or one another. In the sixties, most Americans agreed with the proposition that “most people can be trusted”; today most disagree.’ In the sixties, most Americans believed that the government is run “for the benefit of all”; today, most believe that it’s run for “a few big interests.” And there’s convincing evidence that growing inequality is behind our growing cynicism, which is making the United States seem increasingly like a Latin American country. As the political scientists Eric Uslaner and Mitchell Brown point out (and support with extensive data), “In a world of haves and have-nots, those at either end of the economic spectrum have little reason to believe that ‘most people can be trusted’ . ..social trust rests on a foundation of economic equality.” Paul Krugman, The Conscience of a Liberal pg 251

Lots more to chew on...

[leveymg]

3. Most great fortunes have their origins in major crimes or wars.

The Bush family is iconic of that.

[Octafish]

4. The Family That Preys Together

...is how Jack Calhoun put them:

The Family That Preys Together

by Jack Colhoun
Covert Action Quarterly, Issue No. 41, Summer, 1992

GEORGE JR.'S BCCI CONNECTION

"This is an incredible deal, unbelievable for this small company," energy analyst Charles Strain told Forbes magazine, describing the oil production sharing agreement the Harken Energy Corporation signed in January 1990 with Bahrain.

Under the terms of the deal, Harken was given the exclusive right to explore for gas and oil off the shores of the Gulf island nation. If gas or oil were found in waters near two of the world's largest gas and oil fields, Harken would have exclusive marketing and transportation rights for the energy resources. Truly an "incredible deal" for a company that had never drilled an offshore well.

Strain failed to point out, however, the one fact that puts the Harken deal in focus: George Bush, Jr., the eldest son of George and Barbara Bush of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, DC, is a member of Harken's board of directors, a consultant, and a stockholder in the Texas-based company. In light of this connection, the deal makes more sense. The involvement of Junior-George Walker Bush's childhood nickname-with Harken is a walking conflict of interest. His relationship to President Bush, rather than any business acumen, made him a valuable asset for Harken, the Republican Party benefactors, Middle East oil sheikhs and covert operators who played a part in Harken's Bahrain deal.

In fact, Junior's track record as an oilman is pretty dismal. He began his career in Midland, Texas, in the mid-1970s when he founded Arbusto Energy, Inc. When oil prices dropped in the early 1980s, Arbusto fell upon hard times. Junior was only rescued from business failure when his company was purchased by Spectrum 7 Energy Corporation, a small oil firm owned by William DeWitt and Mercer Reynolds. As part of the September 1984 deal, Bush became Spectrum 7's president and was given a 13.6 percent share in the company's stock. Oil prices stayed low and within two years, Spectrum 7 was in trouble.

In the six months before Spectrum 7 was acquired by Harken in 1986, it had lost $400,000. In the buyout deal, George "Jr." and his partners were given more than $2 million worth of Harken stock for the 180-well operation. Made a director and hired as a "consultant" to Harken, Junior received another $600,000 of Harken stock, and has been paid between $42,000 and $120,000 a year since 1986.

CONTINUED...

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/CIA/Bush_Family_Preys_Together.html

Speak of the devils.

[blm]

6. And so many fools pretend that what happened in BCCI needs to stay in the past.

Doesn't matter to them that nearly all the global turmoil happening today involving the Bushes has its roots in BCCI.

[Octafish]

7. Ménage a Trois: Oil Money, BCCI, and the CIA

Money.

Ménage a Trois: Oil Money, BCCI, and the CIA

Fred Dexter
Covert Action Quarterly
No.44 (Sprlng 1993)

In early August 1991, the global scandal surrounding the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) hit the headlines, and linked the powerful financial institution with the CIA. Acting CIA director Richard Kerr quickly decided to go public with a part of the Agency's relationship to what prosecutors have called the largest bank fraud of all time.

His choice of forum, a lecture to a group of U.S. high school students meeting at the National Press Club in Washington, was odd but rational. His chosen audience was obviously less prepared than journalists or members of Congress to ask tough questions about the Agen cy's relationship to the drug‑corrupted bank. Within this context, Kerr could put the information out in such a way that the CIA had total control over what was said and could thus cast it in an entirely positive light.

Kerr told the students that the bank's global reach and ties to various Middle Eastern groups early on made it a key vehicle for intelligence‑gathering by the Agency. At the same time, the Agency expanded its links with the bank, Kerr explained, both as a source for information on drug money laundering and drug trafficking, and as a mechanism for moving U.S. government funds. Because the bank operated branches in so many countries ‑ some 73 around the world ‑ the CIA used it also for moving Agency monies to its local assets. When the CIA found out the bank was engaged in improper activities, explained Kerr, it passed the information to federal law enforcement. Once it determined that the bank's activities were criminal, the acting director stated, the CIA of course began reducing its operations with the bank, and stopped them completely by the end of 1988.

Acting Director Kerr had indeed chosen his audience well. None of the high school students challenged his superficial account of the CIA's role with BCCI.

Among staff and members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, however, there were grumblings of skepticism. In August 1991, as part of its review of the nomination of Robert Gates for DCI, the committee began an investigation and an audit. The results of that audit are still secret, but some scattered facts have emerged from the public record, and are therefore available to Senate Intelligence staff. Taken together, they suggest a rather different picture of the CIA's role.

CONTINUED...(link no longer works)

http://covertaction.org//content/view/150/75/

Article still hosted here:

http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/archive.cgi?noframes;read=160386

Now that doesn't work. Try:

http://bit.ly/hYkb6z

Serious money. And power?



"Petrolyum is a strategeric re-source."

[eppur_se_muova]

13. "The secret of great fortunes without apparent cause is a crime forgotten, for it was properly done"

A variant, "Behind every great fortune there is a great crime," has appeared as a quotation of Balzac; but it may have originated in a paraphrase in The Oil Barons: Men of Greed and Grandeur (1971) by Richard O'Connor, p. 47: "Balzac maintained that behind every great fortune there is a great crime."

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Honor%C3%A9_de_Balzac#Le_P.C3.A8re_Goriot_.281835.29

[blm]

5. heh...Absolut...Octafish manages to deliver the crooks with his humor intact.

.

[bobthedrummer]

8. K&R#18 n/t

[bobthedrummer]

9. Source Watch Frank Wisner page-very sobering. Btw, I haven't experienced blackouts for 30 years.

Frank Wisner
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Frank_Wisner

:toast:

[bongbong]

22. My head spins

Looking at the sourcewatch page for him, you see he is an "Emeritus Director of Refugees International". Then you look at the sourcewatch page for that organization. The interconnections there are amazing, including "wholesome" names like Dith Pran and somewhat wholesome ones like Soros.

Maybe TPTB make sure one of their guys is watching any organization that might make waves. Maybe something else. But the bottom line is the hyperlinks point towards that club that George Carlin talked about. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5Ujn2UxTcY

[Octafish]

29. It was von Bolschwing.

From our good friend, John Loftus:

Frank G. Wisner, Sr.

[Trailrider1951]

10. Excellent post, as usual, Octafish

Your postings are one of the main reasons I read DU. The truth shall surely set us free.........:yourock:

[Octafish]

26. Frank Wisner, Sr.

The diplomat's dad was one of the Founding Fathers of CIA -- a brave man, a patriot and a hero who worked to keep our nation free. He was a major force in designing the covert action arm of the company, the Office of Policy Coordination. Unfortunately, the situation has changed since his passing in 1965.

Wisner Sr. was a major player in two very important areas:

1. Operation MOCKINGBIRD and related ops which helped control news coverage and shape public opinion in the United States.

2. Operation PAPERCLIP and related ops which brought about the immigration of uncounted NAZI war criminals in the fight against the Communists.

Today, secret government and its connected cronies are pretty much clear to operate without any oversight or accountability.

PS: Really appreciate your kind words, Trailrider1951. The truth is what We the People require to keep our nation free, secure and prosperous.

[Odin2005]

11. K&R! Destroy the PTB!

[Octafish]

27. It's weird - I vote people in to clean up the mess and they hire the same people who caused it.

William K. Black talked about it:

No Mr. President, Larry Summers Did Not Resolve the Financial Crisis for a Pittance, He Just Papered Over the Problem

Money does things to strange people.

Thank you, Odin2005, for giving a damn. While we've been on the same road for years, we may actually be getting someplace worth going to.

[Odin2005]

30. You are welcome!

:hi:

[JackRiddler]

12. That was unbelievable, sending this guy as an "envoy" while his company was in Mubarak's employ!

[blm]

14. Check out today's NYT story. Wisner had his allies in the cabinet. Guess who.

.

[JackRiddler]

17. I'm guessing Gates and/or Clinton. But now I'll go read it...

It's at
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/13/world/middleeast/13diplomacy.html?scp=1&sq=wisner&st=cse

Ha, Clinton picked Wisner and the key Mubarak supporters were Gates, Clinton and Biden. Shockers, I tell ya.

[sabrina 1]

19. What happened to Hillary Clinton? I must have misjudged her but

when she was First Lady I thought she was a very different person than she has turned out to be. Did she sell her soul completely or was she always a war-monger, a supporter of torturers like Suleiman and we just didn't know it. I gave up on her when she voted for the Iraq War. That was a shock at the time, but nothing shocks me anymore about the Clintons. I regret the years I spent defending them to Bush supporters especially since they slapped people who had defended them in face by aligning themselves so closely with the Bush family.

[JackRiddler]

23. Sorry to say but I expect you misjudged her...

She was a "Goldwater Girl" in 1964.

Which does not mean she's a right-winger. I think the careers of Hillary and Bill Clinton show the saga of relentless, flexible, power-seeking political climbers who are really good at and enjoy playing the game of trading in favors and revenges, and who in every case come to redefine their own interests as equivalent to some higher or public good, possibly to even believe it.

The public adoption of Bill as a quasi-son by Bush Sr. was a logical culmination of these careers from the beginning.

[sabrina 1]

20. And the arrogance of the U.S. is clear in that article.

“That’s the kind of guy you would choose to have that conversation,” said Daniel C. Kurtzer, a former ambassador to both Egypt and Israel. “The key question, which we don’t know the answer to, is whether the administration has reached a decision on whether Mubarak should go.”

Publicly, the administration continued to insist that Mr. Mubarak’s future was a matter for the Egyptian people. Neither Mr. Obama nor Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton addressed the matter on Monday, suggesting that they wanted to see how events on the ground were playing out before saying anything more.

So, in the minds of this administration, it was up to the U.S. whether or not the dictator, their 'friend and ally' should go???? While they lied in public, pretending that they were respectful of the people's decision.

I knew Obama's words were not sincere. There is something about how he speaks when he's merely reading a script and when he actually feels passionate about something. What I don't know, is whether he has any choice in what position he takes. The carefully chosen words, which fooled no one, so I don't know why they bother, Hillary's refusal to address the issue of the torturer, Suleiman when speaking to the 'traveling press' asking them to 'shut off' their recorders before she would address the question about Suleiman's human rights abuses as chief of Egypt's secret police. Why the need for secrecy if you are sincere?

I hope the Egyptian people's Revolution is not stolen from them, but I am afraid that is exactly what is going to happen.

[DirkGently]

15. Absolutely.

[Octafish]

31. Pentagon spent $450,000 to fly over Super Bowl for...publicity? Well...

Navy spent $450,000 of taxpayer money on Super Bowl flyover... when the stadium roof was shut

The gas bill alone was $109,000 and how many lives?

[XanaDUer]

16. Excellent post, Octafish

and maddening. I swing between hope and despair.

[Initech]

18. Corrupt capitalism at its finest.

[leftstreet]

21. Aye, pirates!

K&R

Good read

[robertpaulsen]

24. Sorry I'm too late to rec. Thanks for keeping up on the Wisners!

By coincidence, I'm reading The Secret History of the CIA by Joseph J. Trento. There's quite a bit of revealing info on Frank G. Wisner Sr. prior to the debacles in Iran and Guatemala in the 50's. This is from page 23:

Allen W. Dulles, second in command of the OSS, sent a young colleague, Frank Gardiner Wisner, to accept the surrender of Gehlen and several hundred of his officers and their families.

Through Wisner, Gehlen convinced Dulles that the United States must provide protection for thousands of high-ranking Nazis who would otherwise fall under Soviet control.

Gehlen was of course Reinhard Gehlen, a Nazi general who since 1942 was head of Branch 12 of Foreign Armies East. To continue from page 23:

Gehlen signed an agreement with the Americans that turned his organization into U.S.-controlled intelligence asset. Years later, in 1956, it became the intelligence service for the new West German government. This partnership between the ex-Nazis and the OSS/CIA dominated U.S. activity against the Soviet bloc for the next three decades.

But this was only the beginning of Wisner's trickery. From page 46:

Wisner's bureaucracy within the State Department, the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC), was enormous. While officially the OPC was concerned with refugee affairs and worked in conjunction with the International Red Cross, in reality it was authorized by the new National Security Council to conduct sabotage and other covert operations against the Soviets.

By late 1947, Wisner, in an underhanded way, wielded vast power in the State Department bureaucracy. He never asked permission to conduct his operations. Rather, he played a deceptive double game in which he informed either Secretary of State George Marshall or Secretary of Defense James Forrestal that the other secretary had approved his operation. Then he went ahead and carried it out.

With help from the U.S. Army, Wisner's OPC quickly created a U.S. intelligence network manned by anti-Soviet Russian emigres and refugees concentrating on searching Eastern Europe for Nazis to use against the Soviet Union. The OPC supervised Gehlen's operations, now relocated to Munich, and it was engaged in quietly transporting Nazi war criminals, including rocket scientists, mathematicians, engineers, and doctors, into the United States.

[blackspade]

25. Holy Crap!!!

[Overseas]

28. K&R! //nt