Customary “Cover-ups” Flow From Capitol Hill

Yesterday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren exposed the triumph of the Citigroup Bankers over the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. A plethora of Citigroup gangsters hold highly influential positions in the Obama Administration. They pay for campaigns and the three branches of government dance to their pipers. Their slogan is: “privatize the profits, socialize the losses.” The taxpayers absorb the risk and the traders bet on the come line in the Wall St. Alleys. It’s all part of the anti-reform measures put in the “Cromnibus” budget.

Meanwhile a “brutal but ineffective” CIA engages in waterboarding for profit: private contractors profit at the expense of the innocent and guilty but indiscriminately. It’s a nasty world. Psychologists sell trade secrets to the highest bidders.

Here are published comments by the FBI’s trained interrogator who found the link between the 9/11 bombers and Bin Laden’s Al Qaida bunch. Though Ali Soufan was on Rachel Maddow the other night, I got this from John Amato’s April 24, 2009 piece, published, of course, years ago.

“An FBI interrogator named Ali Soufan, who was involved back in 2002 goes public and blows the lid off of the Republican talking points about torture: One of the most striking parts of the memos is the false premises on which they are based. The first, dated August 2002, grants authorization to use harsh interrogation techniques on a high-ranking terrorist, Abu Zubaydah, on the grounds that previous methods hadn’t been working.

“The next three memos cite the successes of those methods as a justification for their continued use. It is inaccurate, however, to say that Abu Zubaydah had been uncooperative. Along with another F.B.I. agent, and with several C.I.A. officers present, I questioned him from March to June 2002, before the harsh techniques were introduced later in August. Under traditional interrogation methods, he provided us with important actionable intelligence.”

Here’s Soufan:

“There was no actionable intelligence gained from using enhanced interrogation techniques on Abu Zubaydah that wasn’t, or couldn’t have been, gained from regular tactics. In addition, I saw that using these alternative methods on other terrorists backfired on more than a few occasions — all of which are still classified. The short sightedness behind the use of these techniques ignored the unreliability of the methods, the nature of the threat, the mentality and modus operandi of the terrorists, and due process.

“One of the worst consequences of the use of these harsh techniques was that it reintroduced the so-called Chinese wall between the C.I.A. and F.B.I., similar to the communications obstacles that prevented us from working together to stop the 9/11 attacks. Because the bureau would not employ these problematic techniques, our agents who knew the most about the terrorists could have no part in the investigation. An F.B.I. colleague of mine who knew more about Khalid Shaikh Mohammed than anyone in the government was not allowed to speak to him.”

The FBI was pretty sure the bombers were coming circa 9/11 but the CIA as well as Bush/Cheney suspected the FBI’s sources because “they” hadn’t bought and paid for them via private contractors. Bush and Cheney sold out America for a mess of pottage: read Richard Clarke, Clinton’s National Security Advisor about Bush’s refusal to listen to the Bin Laden warnings.

The Apologists for the CIA, a rogue agency, remind me of politicians, who no longer understand the U.S. Constitution as the “rule of law” but as a political document to be manipulated in favor of the rich and powerful men and women.

Political Policies Run Down Hill

The politics of the “cover-up” and refusal to prosecute fraud, whether in the financial sector or national security sector, flows down hill to states and municipalities. Here in Taos at the Town, the budget is strained by deferred maintenance, due to violations of the procurement code at the swimming pool, and violations of the anti-donation clause at the Town’s affordable housing project and money wasted at the KCEC Command Center among other places of decay and disaster.

The Command Center folly, finally rejected by Commissioners and the current Mayor, represents millions of dollars in misspent taxpayer money by the Town and Coop, which we members and taxpayers are still paying back to the feds et al.

(Not only have I read the files, researched the record, and published prior stories on same but some of the culprits remain in place at the Town and the Coop in this the city perched on the edge of the Rio de Denio.)

Just after the election of the Barrone-Bellis team, the prior but still incumbent administration of Mayor Cordova and Manager Rodriguez fired the procurement officer, who had revealed the Town’s peccadilloes to recently elected officials and supporters (he should have waited a day or two). The newly elected officials i.e. Barrone, Bellis et al walked, allegedly, into offices with blank computer screens and clean hard drives. Subsequently a new IT man was hired and the prior one “fired.”

Meanwhile the incumbent municipals, due to mysterious and unannounced reasons, have continued to stonewall the Spring Ditch parciantes, despite their constitutional guarantees of ditch rights. Like the former administration, the municipal lawyers talk about the mysteries of the Abeyta agreement and make up excuses, parciantes say,  to screw the members of the  Spring Ditch. Two or a dozen wrongs don’t make a single right.

Sure the most recently elected councilors and mayor seem clean by comparison to prior administrations. But when you lie down with pit bulls you get up with bites on your backside. See Obama’s Citigroup and CIA appointees, who so trouble the President’s administration.

Anthony Romero (no relation to Comm. Gabe) of the ACLU suggested President Obama pardon Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, the CIA, etc. Mr. Santa Claus, Mayor Barrone, ought to pardon the plethora of procurement code violators and anti-donation donors that hang around his door and council, panting for a second chance to screw the people.

They may be rascals but we know the rascals have names.