1Sep/14

Patrick Fitzgerald’s “not not denial” that he warned Blagojevich

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Ernie Souchak, Editor-in-chief

Was former U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald displaying his intellectual shortcomings or was he just being duplicitous when he was given the opportunity to deny that he was the one who ultimately warned Governor Rod Blagojevich that he was recording Blago's phone conversations?

In a recent phone call Fitzgerald was asked directly:

"Do you deny that the U.S. Attorney's Office had communications with the Chicago Tribune about the Blagojevich case on Dec. 4, 2008?"

Fitzgerald's response: "I'm not denying it and I'm not not denying it."

Really, Patrick? "Not not denying it"?

You either deny it or you don't.

And for the record, you did "not deny" communicating with the Chicago Tribune before you decided to "not not deny" communicating with them.

What's next, Patrick? Are you and former White House counsel Greg Craig, who is now your law partner at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP, going to do Abbott and Costello's "Who's on first" routine for us?

And by the way is "not not" the kind of nonsense you teach the students at the University of Chicago Law School in your capacity as a Feirson Distinguished Lecturer?

If so, they will never be able to practice law anywhere but Chicago.

From:(redacted)
To: Sarah Galer
Cc: amgardn, andaws
Sent: March 29, 2013 at 10:59 AM
Subject: Feirson Distinguished Lecturer

Ms. Sarah Galer

Please inform Patrick Fitzgerald that the Office of Professional Responsibility and the U.S. Inspector Generals Office would be who conducts an investigation of a U.S. Attorney.

I would have thought a "Feirson Distinguished Lecturer" would know that.

< name redacted >

p.s. Perhaps Mr. Fitzgerald's 1st lecture could be on this very subject.

-----Original Message-----

From:(redacted)
To: Patrick Fitzgerald
Cc: Aaron Goldstein , Sheldon Sorosky
Sent: 2013-03-29 02:46:11 +0000
Subject: Fwd: Media inquiry/Patrick Fitzgerald

Mr. Patrick Fitzgerald

You are on the record claiming that you do not know who would investigate the U.S. Attorney's Office regarding the leaks to John Chase and the Chicago Tribune.

Do you agree, there should be an investigation?

< name redacted >

-----Original Message-----

From:(redacted)
To: sgaler@uchicago.edu
Sent: 2013-03-27 09:34:58 GMT
Subject: Media inquiry/Patrick Fitzgerald

Ms. Sarah Galer

The fact that the University of Chicago Law School is welcoming former U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald to be part of your schools program. And, that your showering him with accolades at a time that he is embroiled in controversy. Leads me to believe that you might not be aware of just how serious this may ultimately be for your institutions reputation.

Are you aware of the following?

And, if so, have you done due diligence?

U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald “Most Dangerous Man”
https://illinoispaytoplay.com/2013/02/09/turns-out-u-s-attorney-patrick-fitzgerald-most-dangerous/

Why no Grand Jury? Chicago Tribune reporter John Chase involved in a crime. AGAIN!
https://illinoispaytoplay.com/2013/03/09/why-no-grand-jury-chicago-tribune-reporter-john-chase-involved-in-a-crime-again/

< name redacted >

Former U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald named Feirson Distinguished Lecturer

http://news.uchicago.edu/article/2013/03/25/former-us-attorney-patrick-j-fitzgerald-named-feirson-distinguished-lecturer

In Fitzgerald's defense, there is the distinct possibility that he really is this stupid. And let's face it, if he truly is mentally challenged, how would he know unless someone told him?

After all, the media does nothing but tell Fitzgerald how wonderfully smart he is.

In fact, the fawning Chicago media actually remained silent as Fitzgerald declared during a press conference about the Blagojevich case that the leaks to the Tribune "might have come from his office so he could not investigate them," and that he "had no idea who would investigate".

Wow! Can you believe that?

Amazingly, no one in the adoring mainstream media insisted that Fitzgerald explain those ridiculously stupid statements.

Well, Patrick, IP2P has news for you: you're not as bright as the media has led you to believe.

And now that it appears that Blagojevich will get out of prison soon, we insist that you explain your asinine statements about the leaks from your office to the Chicago Tribune.

And while you're at it, Fitz, you also need to explain to the public why you buried irrefutable evidence that:

(A) Sibel Edmonds gave you in the Plamegate scandal;

(B) John A. Shaw gave you in the Nadhmi Auchi scandal; and

(C) I, Ernie Souchak, gave you in the Blagojevich scandal.

Not to mention the well-documented burying of evidence you did in the Southern District of New York.

To be continued...

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25Jan/14

American Thinker’s credibility is dissipating quickly

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Ernie Souchak, Editor-in-Chief

American Thinker's credibility is dissipating quickly.

You see, not disclosing conflicts of interest is turning out to be the norm at American Thinker.

For example: IP2P recently informed its readers of Clarice Feldman's close personal relationship with Richard Perle, whom she frequently goes on the attack for and staunchly defends. As in the case of her baseless attack on Sibel Edmonds.

Now IP2P has also learned that Feldman shares a close friendship with Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith. And as is the case with Perle, she has never disclosed her conflict of interest when attacking others on their behalf.

Nor has American Thinker editor Thomas Lifson required her to do so.

Keeping American Thinker's failure to disclose in mind, let me tell you some other disturbing facts that will have you asking this question: Who is really running the show over at American Thinker?

On September 20, 2012 American Thinker posted an article by Lee Cary entitled "Obama's Chicago Arab-American network comes into focus".

Cary's article states some unflattering facts about a man named Nadhmi Auchi, aka. Saddam Hussein's bag man.

Naturally Auchi did not appreciate this article and to no one's surprise he instructed his lawyers at the London law firm Carter-Ruck to send a letter threatening legal action if said article was not taken down.

Upon receiving Auchi's letter, Lifson took the article down momentarily to verify that it was completely factual. After determining that it was correct, Lifson promptly reposted Cary's article unchanged.

That's because Lee Cary's work was solid, and contributor John A. Shaw is as honest and credible a man as you will ever find.

Taking down that article would have given the public the perception that there was something wrong with the story. And that clearly would not be fair to either Cary or Shaw.

At that time IP2P, which was also named in the letter from Auchi's law firm, posted an article praising American Thinker for doing the right thing.

Due to many factors, including Auchi's inability to legally enter the United States, the letter from his lawyers was an idle threat. And that should have been the end of the story.

Unfortunately that happy ending was not to be.

What happened next was that someone on this side of the pond told Lifson to take the article down. And he did, a second time!

We can not tell you exactly who it was at the moment, we can tell that it was not Nadhmi Auchi or his people, according to Lifson.

Could it have been one of Clarice Feldman's close friends? Perhaps Wolfowitz, Perle or Feith?

In any case, if that wasn't bad enough, Lifson then had the audacity to think that IP2P would take the article down as well. And for some peculiar reason, he would not even tell us why.

Of course Lifson received a prompt, "Hell no!"

In fact, we at IP2P still feel that Thomas Lifson owes Cary and Shaw a formal apology for removing their article a second time from American Thinker without even giving them the courtesy of an explanation.

And more importantly, due to recent revelations about American Thinker's close ties to the Washington elite, Lifson needs to publicly address his publication's controversial policy of not disclosing conflicts of interest.

Read the article that Thomas Lifson took down twice here:

Obama's Chicago Arab-American network comes into focus

 

Related articles by John A. Shaw

REZKO, OBAMA, AND THE NADHMI AUCHI RAILROAD LINKING CHICAGO, WASHINGTON, AND BAGHDAD (Part 1 of 3)

REZKO, OBAMA, AND THE NADHMI AUCHI RAILROAD LINKING CHICAGO, WASHINGTON, AND BAGHDAD (Part 2 of 3)

REZKO, OBAMA, AND THE NADHMI AUCHI RAILROAD LINKING CHICAGO, WASHINGTON, AND BAGHDAD (Part 3 of 3)

 

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28Jun/13

The “James B. Comey Show”

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B. C. Woodstein, Guest Writer

Below, watch James B. Comey's performance at a U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on May 15, 2007 concerning warrantless wiretaps, and the alleged stand-off between the Bush II administration and his Department of Justice (DOJ). Comey's performance is aided by Sen. Chuck Schumer playing the straight man in their skit. Enjoy their depiction of hospital room heroics, worthy of Saturday Night Live.

Now, when you're done laughing at Comey's Schumer-assisted performance that helped scrub clean all the top people at the Bush DOJ, who were just about to be outed by DOJ whistleblower Thomas Tamm for conducting warrantless wiretaps on American Citizens, consider this: After the hospital room "skit," Deputy Attorney General James Comey, Attorney General John Ashcroft, and FBI Director Robert Mueller all went right back to work conducting warrantless wiretaps on American citizens, just as though nothing had happened.

Today, the Hospital room comedy is touted by the regime as the main reason we should accept Comey as the next FBI Director.

If that doesn't get your attention, remember this: On December 30, 2003, Comey appointed U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald to be Special Counsel on what is commonly known as the Valerie Plame Case. Fitzgerald was given extraordinary powers to hunt down the source of a leak to a newspaper reporter who (1.) never wrote a story using the information while (2.) Comey, Patrick Fitzgerald, and half of Washington DC, knew who did leak the information before...yes, before...Fitzgerald was even appointed! The reporter was Judith Miller of the New York Times. The self-confessed leaker was Richard Armitage, the Deputy Secretary of State to Colin Powell.

In retrospect, the whole Plame saga was a surrogate whizzing contest between Powell and his-not-so-good friend Dick Cheney.

Now feature this: Shortly after appointing his buddy Fitzgerald to be Special Counsel in the Valerie Plame Case, Comey went to work as the top lawyer at Lockheed Martin. They do a lot of surveillance business with the feds.

Now factor in Mark Grossman. Remember him? He was the Undersecretary of State who reported to Deputy Secretary of State Dick Armitage. Grossman wrote the memo that started the whole Plame thing – as Gomer Pyle said, "Surprise, surprise."

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Marc Grossman

 

Coincidently, two of Marc Grossman's colleagues at the Cohen Group (that would be Cohen as in Bill Clinton's former SecDef) – namely Vice-Chair Joseph Ralston and Senior Counselor James Loy – sit on the Board of Directors at Lockheed Martin.

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Joseph W. Ralston                                                                                          James M. Loy

You suppose Ralston and Loy were so delighted with the job that Comey and his buddy Fitz were doing keeping the Chicago/Washington/Bagdad Railroad that John Shaw exposed running, that they recommended Lockheed Martin bring Comey on board and pay him a boat load of money?

Comey's total compensation in 2009 alone was $6,113,797, which was multiple times higher than the position ordinarily paid.

Oh, and did you know that Grossman was Fitz's star witness in the Scooter Libby trial? Gee, it's a small world!

Here's a question the media never did ask: Did Grossman know Valerie Plame's husband, Joe Wilson. If so, how did he know him, and for how long? After all, Grossman and Wilson went to the same college, at the same time, and were doing the same job in neighboring countries leading up to, and during, "Operation Desert Storm." Grossman was Deputy Chief of Mission in Turkey, and Wilson was Deputy Chief of Mission in Iraq.

Think maybe they knew each other?

Do you think Chuck Schumer or any of the Senator's on the Senate Judiciary Committee will look for answers to these important questions?

Tune in to find out on the next "James B Comey Show" coming to a Senate committee hearing on your TV.

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23Oct/12

REZKO, OBAMA, AND THE NADHMI AUCHI RAILROAD LINKING CHICAGO, WASHINGTON, AND BAGHDAD (Part 1of 3)

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Guest Writer, John A. Shaw

Shaw served as Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for International Technology Security and in a variety of other senior U.S. Government positions. Prior to his appointment by former Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, Shaw was President and CEO of the American Overseas Clinics Corporation. Prior senior positions in the government included the White House staffs of Presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and Bush I. He served as White House Liaison to the US Defense Department under President Ford and to the US State Department under President Reagan.  Shaw received a B.A. from Williams College, as well as a Bachelors, Masters, and Ph.D. from Cambridge University,He has taught international security studies at Cambridge University, Williams College, Georgetown University, and theInstitut d'Etudes Politiques in Paris.” (Source)

 

PART I.  NADHMI AUCHI: THE RAILROAD ENGINEER

The kingpin of Iraqi corruption, Nadhmi Auchi, and his Chicago henchman, Antoin “Tony” Rezko, built a well-financed network of political influence in Chicago over several decades. Barack Obama is its most famous beneficiary.


Nadhmi Auchi is an Iraqi-born billionaire who relocated from Baghdad to London in 1980 where he adopted British citizenship.


Auchi is the engineer who designed a new political railroad that connects the Middle East to the Middle West, with tracks that run through Washington.  Auchi financed it all. Think of him as the empire builder for the Chicago, Washington & Baghdad Railroad, with Tony Rezko as Conductor, and Barack Obama as its favored Passenger.


Auchi’s efforts to play a role in American policy-making go back to the Jimmy Carter presidency. It took Auchi three decades to lay a track that reached into the U.S. intelligence community and built a spy ring operating out of Detroit funded by U.N. Oil-for-Food vouchers.


Auchi first appeared on the American scene backed by recommendations from European allies regarding his abilities and dependability. He arrived just as the U.S. was looking to lay tracks to Iraq at the commencement of the Iran-Iraq War. Once his bona fides were established in America, Auchi became a certified Washington player.


The First Gulf War provided Auchi an opportunity to ingratiate him with Pentagon figures whose influence would continue a decade later with the onset of the Iraq War. It gave him the Big Chance he sought.


In time, Auchi was seen as a transatlantic statesman with the magical, transformative ability to affect change everywhere in the world. He sold himself as a global entrepreneur who built a European empire and now wanted to extend it, in a helpful way, into America.


The substance of Auchi’s leverage was simple: Money, the mother’s milk of politics. As was his wont, the money went though middle men, multiple cut-outs, and a complex international financial grid, so that there were no Auchi fingerprints left on anything. It is the standard Auchi method of securing influence over politicians.  


Auchi bought influence in the old way with the Democrats. But while his money generally went to Democratic causes and candidates, intermittent Republican control of the White House enabled Auchi’s influence to spread through his charitable donations to G.O.P. causes, and by bringing his substantive capabilities and sympathetic demeanor to their deliberations and problems concerning the Middle East.


In short, he came to be seen as a statesman and business wizard by men of stature in Washington as he created a positive reputation that transcended party lines.


Through the years, Auchi gained access to the Clinton White House and both Bush White Houses. Today, he is able to influence the Obama White House.


Auchi began as the international banker for Saddam Hussein. For Saddam, he bought national leaders the same way Rezko bought state boards, state senators and, eventually, a governor.


A man who has followed Auchi’s activity closely for twenty five years, and who has held senior positions in the U.S. government, reflects due awe over “the suborning tactics of the patriarch of Arab deal making.” Auchi’s genius, this man says, “is not to start with the deals, but to master the environment so as to suborn it. After that he can drive a Mack truck through the environment. He is patient and wily, a master operator. He finds willing surrogates, like Rezko, to ply local folks in the ‘target’ zone with money and favors, not with grease ball stunts like cash in envelopes (though he does that very well too); he will do whatever it takes. His commitment is for the long term, and his involvement is concealed until everything is in place, be it in Baghdad, Cairo, London, Paris, or Chicago.” The source adds that Auchi has developed a legion of surrogates, both Arab and Western, to act on his behalf so that his involvement in any deal is seldom overt. Everything he does tends to be understated, or denied.


Auchi’s apparent invulnerability comes from two sources: The first is his investment and accompanying avalanche of philanthropy. The above observer notes that “his real gift is to enshroud the whole criminal enterprise in ‘good works’ and charitable giving, stuffed full of medals and titles and ceremonial dinners and cross-cultural ‘peace-making’ exercises. Who would dare bring down such a worthy man…hiding, if you will, in plain view?”


The second reason for his invulnerability is that, by 1980, he had became a major asset of British Intelligence, MI6, enabling him to gain entry into any situation, into anywhere in the Arab world or Europe, and into any problem, financial or political.


His connection with MI6 provided Auchi with an entrée into U.S. intelligence via Lord Cavendish’s, former head of MI6, introduction to a small transatlantic group called Le Cercle,which focused on mutual national security interests. From then on Auchi enjoyed, relying heavily on his charitable donations, access to the U.S. policy-making nexus dealing with the Middle East and North Africa. Meanwhile, his Chicago-based political organization financially greased the skids to give him access to the White House across several administrations.


British journalists universally believe in Auchi’s protective symbiosis with MI6. The best evidence of that is how it took eighteen months for the French government to get Auchi extradited from Britain for trial in the Elf/Aquitaine case. He returned to France, was convicted of getting a $100 million kickback, and admitted to all the charges against him, saying only that he had been told by the President de la Republique that there was no problem. He obviously has no problem with the British Government either.


The cover given Auchi by Whitehall, plus his ability to sue anyone who dared surface any facts about his continuing corruption activities, assured a continuing safe haven for him in London.  MI6 basically has given Auchi a license to steal, and allowed him to buy respectability through charitable donations and good works apart from his business dealings. He has been granted a coat of arms by the Queen, and has been knighted by the Pope.


Auchi has bought the leadership of the Labour and Liberal Democrat parties, and a measure of benign neglect from the Conservative party. He found them no less pliable than their neighbors across the Channel, or around the Mediterranean, who have been available for sale all his adult life. His General Mediterranean Holdings (GMH) is an appropriate name for Auchi’s financial empire.


Auchi has a clear, long-term strategy.  He has been running a financial operation, parallel to that in the U.S., quite successfully in Great Britain and across Europe for a generation. He was a central, but shadowy, figure in the so-called London Group, which the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction identified as the hub of in-country Iraqi corruption after the 2003 invasion.


Some echoes of Auchi’s methodology can be found in Britain where a pharmaceutical firm run by his daughter was indicted by the Serious Fraud Office at the Treasury for the largest fraud in the history of the National Health Service, but then was absolved. Hospital and medical investments have been a part of Auchi’s strategy, not only in the U.K., but elsewhere in Europe, in Iraq, and in Chicago. He has been feted by the Royal Society of Medicine, and by its counterparts, from Cairo to Chicago.


Nadhmi Auchi was one of Saddam Hussein’s most able and aggressive arms dealers when he came into my purview about twenty five years ago when I had responsibility for foreign military sales for the U.S. government.


As time went on, and I gained greater and greater involvement in the Middle East, I watched Auchi build his financial empire with his brilliant combination of political manipulation, financial genius, and ruthless opportunism. For three decades, I have followed arms and technology trade in the Middle East, and, for that reason, I have an acute sense of Auchi’s operational methods.


I have spoken at length to people who know Auchi well, and to a legion of people who have observed him closely over decades. Most of them do not wish to be identified, either because they do not want their sources to dry up, or out of simple fear. I know of three deaths, two of them outright murders, in which Auchi is a lingering spectral figure. One of them was an American contractor who came to my Pentagon office to tell me how he had been defrauded of $25 million dollars by a Lebanese banker in Iraq. Three days later, he and his partner were shot to death by a hit squad northwest of Baghdad.


What follows is an attempt to put together an overview of the Auchi’s concerted effort over those three decades to insinuate himself into the American political process and into various policy avenues in which he could both provide benefit and derive profit and power. It is necessarily a puzzle with many of the pieces missing. But the pieces that are conjoined provide a sketch of Auchi in action.


The myth propagated by Auchi is that he left Baghdad in 1980 because of disaffection with Saddam. In fact, he left Baghdad with a large chunk of Saddam’s and Muammar Ghaddafi’s overseas money, which became the nexus for his Luxembourg enterprise, GMH.


The reality is that, for well over a decade, Auchi was the main financial operator in Europe for Saddam, who established him everywhere as his principal financial guy. In 1993, Jamil al-Amdar, then Saddam’s main man in China, when seeking asylum in the West, confirmed that “Saddam’s enforcer for Europe is his cousin, Barsan al-Tikriti, who had diplomatic status from a U.N. post in Vienna, but his main money man in Europe and the West, was Nadhmi Auchi.”


Auchi has woven another myth that he broke with Saddam over the killing of his brother. But, in fact, that murder arose from his brother’s attempts to take over a Saddam pipeline deal.


For the next three decades Auchi built up his empire in Europe, the Middle East, and the U.S., with the U.S. as his ultimate and richest target, and with Saddam providing the money.


Auchi’s overarching ability is to spread money around politically and use it to leverage lucrative government and commercial contracts. His role as Saddam’s banker allowed him to build his GMH into the largest stockholder in BNP Parisbas, which, thanks to Auchi, became the trough for the U.N. Oil-for-Food scam. (A researcher for the Volker Report on the U.N. Oil-for-Food program confirmed that, while Auchi’s name never appeared in the report, his fingerprints were evident across the program; French political pressure prevented its inclusion in the report).


Auchi was found guilty in 2003 of taking a million dollar kickback in the Elf-Aquitaine scandal in France, the largest corruption case in French history. His influence with successive presidents of France assured that he was only given a suspended prison sentence and a several million dollar fine. He returned to England unscathed.


A good indicator of Auchi’s methods of operation and reach can be found in David Ignatius’s 1994 novel, The Bank of Fear, where the main antagonist is based wholly on Auchi. The novel reflects the history of the two decades after 1980 when Auchi was the unacknowledged but actual financial front man for Saddam in Europe. Ignatius had started to write an expose of Auchi and his dealings, but decided that the British libel laws made a novel a wiser alternative.


COMING NEXT - PART II: A SNAPSHOT OF AUCHI’S METHODS: FIXING THE CONTRACT FOR THE IRAQI CELLULAR PHONE SYSTEM

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