The CIA, Robert Gates, James Baker, Iran-Contra and Carlyle connection: Will Democrats REPEAT the failures of Lee Hamilton's Iran-Contra WHITEWASH??

Because the Democrats FAILED to prosecute the IRAN-CONTRA trial aggressively in Congress and IN THE COURT of PUBLIC OPINION, the Repuglicans were able to storm back in 1994 under the banners of "Democratic corruption," "term limits!" and...."MORAL VALUES"!!

(Notice the STOMPPED, CRUSHED and killed Democratic donkey trampled under foot... is that a malevolent glare in the elephant's eyes?)

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This terrific article by William Rivers Pitt manages to tie together most of the sad, sorry details of the top layer of Republican-corporate MISRULE over America these past three decades. His article reveals the nexus between the CIA, the Carlyle group, the Iran-Contra scandal (which should be, make no mistake, the preference of America's right-wing foreign policy elements for DEATH SQUAD DICTATORSHIPS over democratically elected governments), and the tendency of THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY, in this case as represented by LEE HAMILTON, to COVER UP, WHITEWASH, BURY and help the Republicans CENSOR the true stories behind America's aggressive, ruthless, and often illegal foreign policy.

If, as Mr. Pitt details in his report, Carlyle does now commands _$44_BILLION_ in assets, then they are obviously a tremendously powerful political adversary who will CONTINUE to use every means possible to CENSOR in depth coverage of their influence, over the government of these United States, from discussion or even mention in the 'mainstream media'.

For an example of the DESTRUCTIVE, censorship powers the players at the top tier of Republican foreign policy making can exert over the 'news', witness simply the destruction of the career of journalist Gary Webb, the reporter who first broke and and reported the story of how the CIA was permitting COCAINE to be smuggled into America airports on the same covert aircraft that were running (flying) guns, supplies, and other illegal assistance to the Contra anti-Sandinista rebels and other armies (America's surrogate death-squad allies) in Nicaragua, Honduras, and throughout South America.

Indeed, not only did journalist Gary Webb's career end in tragedy with his suicide while the "mainstream media" scoffed at his reporting and implied that his stories were loony conspiracy theories, (he was, in the words of this new book "BETRAYED [and fired] by his editors... despite mounting evidence that his stories were correct"), but there is even speculation that he might have been murdered to squelch his bringing attention to the issue - of the CIA's role in IMPORTING COCAINE INTO AMERICA to support a ROGUE, ILLEGAL, covert foreign army in Central America.

(Kill the Messenger: How the CIA's Crack-Cocaine Controversy Destroyed Journalist Gary Webb)
http://www.buzzflash.com/store/reviews/402

note: From the perspective of those secretive operatives and administrators at the top tier of the CIA and America's covert foreign policy, allowing cargo planes returning from illegally supplying Contra armies in Central America to bring in a cargo of cocaine is/was practically a no brainer. Cocaine is an agricultral product whose output is measured in tons (most ag products are measured in millions of metric tons); but a product, due to US prohibition and criminal law, that on the streets in America is valuable as gold to US consumers. This transition, the huge jump in value of an agricultaral semi-commodity to precious substance, occurs during the transportation phase, i.e. after successful importation into the US. Given that illegal gun-running flights to Central and South America were returning empty, and given that the American organizers and suppliers of the Contra armies were in an almost "holy war" frame of mind to exterminate the socialist / communist / Sandanista regime and other assorted guerrilla/insurgent armies in Latin America (upwards of 200,000 Guatemala villagers and indigenous natives killed during the death-squad '80s alone), ALLOWING RETURNING FLIGHTS from Central America TO BRING COCAINE back to the United Sates, and thereby earn tens of thousands of dollars to defray fuel costs and other expenses of running a secret air force, WAS A NO-BRAINER.

The other big side of the story - besides the illegal, rogue elements of ultra-right/conservative/Republican foreign policy elements and policies themselves - was the role that DEMOCRATS and official Washington (press, government bureaucrats, media networks) had in DISMISSING THE TRUE EXTENT OF THE SCANDALS, and wet-blanketting, whitewashing, and burying the reports and any efforts at more thorough investigations. This effort BY DEMOCRATS and official Washington TO BURY the TRUE story of the CIA's Iran-Contra cocaine connection led to Gary Webb's disgrace in the journalism field, and of course would contribute greatly to the Republican's presumption of a self-proclaimed "MORAL VALUES" high-ground in the coming decade's elections.

The THIRD branch of the story, not connected in William River Pitt's article, is the SAVINGS and LOAN scandal - the TENS of BILLIONS of dollars LOST BY AMERICAN TAXPAYERS to fraud, corruption, and incompetence in America's S&L and banking industries. While there were of course Democrats involved in the huge S&L scandal (John Glenn, along with John McCain, were two of the most prominent members of the "Keating 7" senators paid large sums to lobby on behalf of failed S&L operator Charles Keating), it was the impact of the S&L scandal on the American economy, more than any other factors, which led to George H.W. Bush's failed re-election campaign in 1992. And even then, the Republican sense of entitlement, power, and corporate fundraising were so entrenched that it took Ross Perot's evening TV lecture charts on busted budgets and deficits, AND Bill Clinton's amazing dark-horse campaign, to oust the elder Bush and his Republicans from the White House and executive office.

As we see here in William Rivers Pitt's article, Mr. Bush (Sr.) and many of his former senior officials (James Baker, George Schultz, and even former British Prime Minister John Major) are now part of a holding company THAT IS MORE POWERFUL than many small countries, a group of senior officials who are only ONE-HALF-STEP-AWAY from the US presidency itself- especially with former Secretary of State and former Carlyle board member JAMES BAKER now heading up the "Iraq Study Group" to offer policy alterantives to America's most important current foreign policy debacle. That is, Mr. Baker probably has almost as much authority over the course of America's foreign policy as the Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, who has been all but FROZEN OUT of policy determinations by the Cheney-Rumsfeld axis, and is now notably absent from the discussions over conduct of the Iraq war in the week before and after election 2006.

CARLYLE, James Baker, the Iraq War... it is not "conspiracy theory" to say there is a very short line between these three connections, and that the former Carlyle board member probably has MORE influence over the future conduct of the Iraq war than the current Secretary of State. That the Iraq war has been VERY, VERY, VERY PROFITABLE to Carlyle and other defense contractors, a company at the very apex of what REPUBLICAN President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned Americans about, an overly powerful and anti-democratic MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX.

We here at C-dems would like to transition over to "Democrats2008" or some other website, BUT the danger that Democrats will BUCK UNDER to the power of Carlyle and ohter Republican anti-democratic tendencies (so well funded by corporate America) is so strong, we find ourselves continually adding posts to this blog.

NEXT: we promise to post Chapter 1 of Robert Parry's Secrecy and Privilege", detailing how President Clinton and the Democrats underfunded, undercut, and disbanded several on-going investigations into Republican criminality in the Iran-Contra, S&L, and other scandals early in 1993, thereby paving the way for the "Contract on America" Republican House in 1994.


- John Major Appointed European Chairman of The Carlyle Group
http://www.carlyle.com/eng/news/l5-news716.html

- Here's a good introduction to Carlyle member's _extraordinary_ connections-
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Carlyle_Group

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The CARLYLE WHITE HOUSE
by William Rivers Pitt
Wednesday, 15 November 2006, 8:23 pm

The Carlyle White House


It was bad enough when the Carlyle Group bought Dunkin' Donuts last year, forcing millions of conscientious caffeine addicts to look elsewhere for their daily fix. Now, it appears Carlyle has added 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to its formidable portfolio of acquisitions.

The Carlyle Group achieved national attention in the early days of the Iraq occupation, especially after Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" exposed the firm's umbilical ties to the Bush family and the House of Saud. For the uninitiated, Carlyle is a privately-owned equity firm organized and run by former members of the Reagan and Bush Sr. administrations.

Currently, Carlyle manages more than $44 billion in 42 different investment funds, which is an interesting fact in and of itself: Carlyle could lay claim to only a meager $12 billion in funds in December of 2001. Thanks to their ownership of United Defense Industries, a major military contractor that sells a whole galaxy of weapons systems to the Pentagon, Carlyle's profits skyrocketed after the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Some notable present and former employees of Carlyle include former president George H.W. Bush, who resigned in 2003; James Baker III, Bush Sr.'s secretary of state and king fixer; and George W. Bush, who served on Carlyle's board of directors until his run for the Texas governorship. One notable former client of Carlyle was the Saudi BinLaden Group, which sold its investment back to the firm a month after the September 11 attacks. Until the October 2001 sellout, Osama bin Laden himself had a financial interest in the same firm that employed the two presidents Bush.

How has Carlyle managed to acquire the White House? The newest edition of Newsweek begins to tell the tale in a story titled "The Rescue Squad": "Bush Senior has been relegated to watching all those political talk shows his son refuses to watch, wincing each time he hears his son's name being mocked or criticized. George H.W. Bush has been, in effect, sidelined by nepotism. He has repeatedly told close friends that he does not believe it is appropriate or wise to second-guess his son, or even offer advice beyond loving support. This time, however, was different. A source who declined to be identified discussing presidential confidences told NEWSWEEK that Bush 41 left 'fingerprints' on the Rumsfeld-Gates decision, though the father's exact role remains shrouded in speculation."

There is much more to this than Big George simply trying to shove Little George in a different direction, because Big George never travels alone. All of a sudden, two of the elder's main men - James Baker III and Robert Gates - are back in the saddle. Baker has spent the last weeks riding herd over the Iraq Study Group, a collection of old foreign policy hands tasked to come up with a solution to the Iraq debacle. Gates was a member of this group until he was tapped to replace Don Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense. The Iraq Study Group is slated to produce some tablets of wisdom come December.

A third member of the Iraq Study Group, former congressman Lee Hamilton, is the rope that ties this curious historical package together. During the Reagan days, Hamilton was chairman of the committee investigating the Iran/Contra scandal that nearly submarined Reagan's presidency and haunted Bush Sr. until his defeat in 1992. In essence, Hamilton took Reagan's people at their word when they assured the chairman that neither Reagan nor Bush were "in the loop" regarding the arms-for-hostages deal.

History and investigation have proven this to be quite separate from the truth, and Hamilton later admitted he should not have bought what Reagan's people were selling. The fact remains, however, that Hamilton let these guys slip the noose during what was, at the time, an investigation into one of the most serious abrogations of Constitutional law in our history. It is worthwhile to note that the man who brought the most pressure upon Hamilton within Congress to be "bipartisan" and avoid a protracted investigation was then-Wyoming representative Dick Cheney.

One of the men spared prosecution in the Iran/Contra scandal, thanks in no small part to the gentility of Mr. Hamilton, was Robert Gates. Gates, then a senior official within the CIA, was widely believed to have been neck-deep in the plot. During the investigation into the scandal, Gates parroted Reagan and claimed not to remember when he knew what he knew about everything that was happening down in Ollie North's office. In 1991, he was nominated and eventually appointed to be the head of CIA by Bush Sr. During his confirmation hearings, according to the New York Times, it was revealed that "Mr. Gates [had] distorted intelligence reports so they would conform to the political beliefs of his superiors."

That sounds familiar.

Gates's nomination to the post of secretary of defense was field-generaled behind the scenes by James Baker III, who has suddenly taken on a muscular role within the Bush White House since the spectacular Republican wipeout during the midterm elections last Tuesday. Baker's return, along with the new prominence of Bush Sr., has been hailed in the mainstream press as a healthy step toward stability and sanity.

One is forced to wonder, however, which masters Mr. Baker is actually serving. Baker's Carlyle Group has profited wildly from the conflict in Iraq, which begs the question: will the bottom line, augmented by Carlyle's defense contracts, trump any attempts to establish a just and lasting peace? It must also be noted that Baker's law firm, Baker Botts, is currently serving as defense counsel for Saudi Arabia against a suit brought by the families of 9/11 victims. The connections between the Bush family and the Saudi royals has been discussed ad nauseam, and Mr. Baker is so closely entwined with the Bush clan that he might as well be a blood relative.

The weakening of George W. Bush, in short, has opened the door for an alumnus of the Iran/Contra scandal, Robert Gates, to gain control of the Pentagon - his nomination, as yet, has met with little Congressional resistance. This process was managed by James Baker, whose Carlyle Group made billions off the Iraq occupation and whose fealty to the American people has all too often taken a back seat to the needs and desires of the royal family of Saudi Arabia. These two, along with Hamilton, have been instrumental in crafting, by way of the Iraq Study Group, what by all accounts will soon be America's foreign policy lynchpin in Iraq and the Middle East as a whole.

Behind it all is George H.W. Bush, former employee of Carlyle, who has somehow managed to refashion his reputation into that of a grandfatherly, level-headed, steady hand, a foreign policy "realist" whose mere presence will soothe and calm the troubled waters we sail in. Unfortunately, his "realism" is a significant reason the United States finds itself in its current mess - until the Gulf War, Saddam Hussein was a boon confederate of both the Reagan and Bush administrations in their fight against Iran - and the team of experts he has brought with him have done more to undermine the national security of the country than any other three people one could name.

The winner in all this, of course, is the Carlyle Group. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.