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Oct. 06 Undernews had several sex scandal cover-up clips, three of
which I partially reproduced below. Full stories and more of them are
available at: DC SEX AND CRIME ARCHIVES http://prorev.com/sexindc.htm The last and current piece by Rosa Brooks for the Los Angeles Times was featured in The Calamity Howler. It neatly sums up today's overall picture of Republican propensity to sacrifice children -- from lack of health care to tax cuts for the rich to Iraqi innocents. Natalia ....... WAYNE MADSEN, ONLINE JOURNAL - [Jeff] Gannon bypassed established Secret Service security controls, including a background check requiring a social security number, to obtain a White House press pass that identified him by an alias, an action seen by many seasoned Washington journalists as only being possible if he had favorable treatment from White House staff. . . One White House reporter expressed revulsion over the fact that it was [Ari] Fleischer who took away press credential from the late long-time White House correspondent Sarah McClendon and handed them to Gannon. . . Gannongate is reminiscent of a huge political scandal that surfaced in Nebraska in 1989 when it was learned that Lawrence King, the head of Franklin Community Credit Union in Omaha and a rising African American star in the GOP (he sang the national anthem at George H. W. Bush's 1988 nominating convention in New Orleans), was a kingpin, along with top Republicans in Nebraska and Washington, DC, including George H. W. Bush, in a child prostitution and pedophilia scandal. King was later convicted and jailed for fraud but pedophile and prostitution charges were never brought against him and other Nebraska Republican businessmen and politicians. The scandal, investigated by Nebraska State Senator Loran Schmit, his assistant John DeCamp (a former GOP State Senator), State Senate Committee investigator Gary Caradori, and former CIA Director William Colby, reached the very top echelons of the George H. W. Bush administration and GOP. Child prostitutes from Boys Town and other orphanages in Nebraska as well as children procured from China were reportedly flown to Washington for sexcapades with Republican politicians. GOP lobbyist Craig Spence and a number of GOP officials in the administration and Congress were implicated in the scandal, including Labor Secretary Elizabeth Dole's liaison to the White House. Young male members of the military in Washington, DC were particularly sought after by the prostitution ring. During the early 1980s, a number of naval officers were implicated in a child pornography ring that extended from Oregon to the San Francisco Bay area and to Chicago and Washington, DC. The story about that ring was covered up by then-Secretary of the Navy John Lehman. The Nebraska pedophile scandal was similarly covered up on orders from the highest levels of power in the Bush White House. Caradori and his young son were killed in a suspicious plane crash in Illinois in 1990. Colby was found floating dead in the Chesapeake Bay, near his home, in 1996. Craig Spence allegedly committed suicide in 1989. Witnesses, many of whom were abused themselves, were intimidated and subsequently jailed in Nebraska and the investigation of the pedophile scandal eventually collapsed. . . http://www.onlinejournal.com/Media/021805Madsen/021805madsen.html PAUL M. RODRIGUEZ AND GEORGE ARCHIBALD WASHINGTON TIMES, 1989: A homosexual prostitution ring is under investigation by federal and District authorities and includes among its clients key officials of the Reagan and Bush administrations, military officers, congressional aides and U.S. and foreign businessmen with close social ties to Washington's political elite, documents obtained by The Washington Times reveal. One of the ring's high-profile clients was so well-connected, in fact, that he could arrange a middle-of-the-night tour of the White House for his friends on Sunday, July 3, of last year. Among the six persons on the extraordinary 1 a.m. tour were two male prostitutes . . . Reporters for this newspaper examined hundreds of credit-card vouchers, drawn on both corporate and personal cards and made payable to the escort service operated by the homosexual ring . . . Among the client names contained in the vouchers - and identified by prostitutes and escort operators - are government officials, locally based U.S. military officers, businessmen, lawyers, bankers, congressional aides and other professionals . . . KARLYN BARKER, WASHINGTON POST, JULY 24, 1990: The alleged leader of what authorities have called the largest male prostitution operation in the Washington area surrendered to federal agents yesterday and pleaded not guilty to racketeering charges that have been filed against him and three alleged accomplices. Henry W. Vinson, 29, of Williamson, W.Va., a coal miner's son accused of setting up the homosexual escort service, was arraigned in U.S. District Court here yesterday afternoon after turning himself in to Secret Service agents . . . At a news conference after the arraignment, [U.S. Attorney Jay] Stephens said the investigation into the alleged prostitution ring "is concluded" and that the indictment, which was unsealed yesterday, focused on those who allegedly set up the ring rather than on clients who reportedly patronized it. Asked about earlier reports that some of those clients included high-level officials in the Reagan and Bush administrations, Stephens said the investigation had not revealed "additional conduct which suggests criminal conduct on behalf of other people." . . . The Vinson case provoked additional notice after The Washington Times published reports last summer suggesting that the alleged prostitution ring had been patronized by government officials. The Times named as clients several low-level government employees and Craig J. Spence, a Washington lobbyist and party-giver who, the paper said, took friends and prostitutes on late-night tours of the White House. Spence was found dead in a Boston hotel room last fall, and authorities ruled his death a suicide. TIMOTHY MAIER, INSIGHT, Oct. 20, 1997: Blackmail, lies and deceit may be the only fitting description of the 1993 Seattle Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, or APEC, summit where dignitaries from 17 countries are reported to have been placed under electronic surveillance by American agents. As Insight first reported last month, the Clinton administration is said by intelligence and security specialists -- who admitted being involved -- to have bugged the conclave and then provided classified secrets to the Democratic National Committee. This in turn allegedly was used as bait to barter with potential big-buck donors for large contributions to the Democratic coffers, sources in and out of government claim. This week the story continued to develop with new twists and turns. Former officials of the National Security Council, or NSC, and high-level economic advisers tell Insight they remain deeply concerned that classified information may have been leaked for political purposes. "That would make it blackmail," says a former senior-level Bush appointee who asked not to be identified because of an ongoing business relationship with the Clinton administration. "I find the story totally credible. I wouldn't put it past this administration." Insight also detailed in earlier reports a series of alleged criminal activities, including the procuring of boys to engage in sexual activities with diplomats; FBI agents accepting thousands of dollars of kickbacks; and, the most serious offense, the White House providing top-secret trade information to two West Coast law firms working off the books for the DNC . . . The FBI is believed to have bugged more than 300 locations, with electronic audio and video surveillance devices used to monitor 10,000 to 15,000 conversations -- much of it real-time data that was bounced from satellites to the NSA. The monitoring stations usually were placed near a Secret Service perimeter or Naval Intelligence facilities. And many of the targets concerned large contracts with Vietnam, sources say . . . The boys are believed to have been 15 to 17 years old. As shocking as this may be, some say it's routine. A former Bush economic adviser observes, "The sex? That's done all the time. If a foreign diplomat wants a companion, the State Department provides it. It doesn't matter if it's a man or woman. They have a special fund set up for that." Another former NSC official who requested anonymity says other countries also do it. "I was offered every sexual favor you can imagine. I turned it down all the time. After a while they left me alone and stopped offering me." GRAND OLD PARTY OF CHILD ENDANGERMENT BY Rosa Brooks Los Angeles Times October 6, 2006 The famously effective GOP messaging machine has broken down. On Wednesday, just as President Bush was insisting that Americans must "vote Republican for the safety of the United States," Republican Rep. Ray LaHood of Illinois was telling CNN that Congress can't even ensure the safety of the young pages under its care. "Let's suspend [the page program], send the pages home," LaHood told CNN's Miles O'Brien. "To send 15- and 16-year-old boys and girls to Washington, D.C. … we should not subject [them] to this kind of activity and this kind of vulnerability." In response, O'Brien commented: "Well, that's kind of a sorry state of affairs. In essence, what you're saying is that members of Congress can't be trusted to be around young people." LaHood's answer was blunt: "Well, that's pretty obvious." Yup, that's where we're at, my fellow citizens. It's a little hard to trust the Republican-led Congress to keep the whole United States safe when you can't even trust them not to molest your children. The Foley scandal makes for salacious reading, and it's always satisfying to see hypocrisy exposed for what it is. But neither the Foley page scandal nor the Republican leadership's energetic efforts to shove it under the carpet should come as a surprise. Though only the Foley scandal has generated substantial media coverage, the Republican-led Congress has a long record of child endangerment. Recall that from 2000 to 2005, Congress handed out tax breaks for the rich like hors d'oeuvres at a Republican fundraiser. They slashed the estate tax and the capital gains tax, selling these cuts with an advertising campaign that misled ordinary people into thinking the cuts were going to help working Americans, instead of just the rich. Meanwhile, they gave the president a blank check for the war in Iraq (and blithely sent other people's children off to risk their lives in that war). They made no effort to hold the administration accountable for flawed prewar intelligence or the ongoing failure to bring some modicum of stability to Iraq. Instead, as the price tag for these failed policies went up and up, Congress kept right on writing checks. This combination of irresponsible tax cuts and out-of-control spending guaranteed that there would be little left over for the crucial social programs American children need, such as meaningful spending on healthcare, job-creation and anti-poverty programs. The result was predictable. From 2000 to 2005, the number of American children living in poverty went up by 1.3 million, and the likelihood that any given child is poor increased by nine percent. (Incidentally, Washington, D.C. — the one region of the United States under the direct control of Congress — had higher child poverty rates than any state in the nation, with 32.2% of children living under the poverty line in 2005.) There are now more American children without health insurance, as well: From 2004 to 2005 alone, the number of uninsured children went from 7.9 million to 8.3 million children, with the uninsured now accounting for 11.2% of all American children. Children don't live in a vacuum, of course. They're part of families, and their fate is entwined with their parents' fate. And no matter how you slice and dice the data, American families and the children who live in them are more vulnerable now than they have been in decades. The richest few are getting richer, but the middle class is disappearing, and the poor are getting poorer. From 2000 to 2005, the median income dropped 2.7% in real terms, yet Congress hasn't raised the minimum wage in nine years. The federally mandated minimum wage is still a rock-bottom $5.15. At that wage, a full-time worker remains well below the poverty line. In 2005, seven in 10 poor children had at least one working parent --- and the number of Americans living in what the government defines as "extreme poverty" went up by 3.3 million from 2000 too 2005. The statistics are dry, but what they mean, in real life, is babies who die because their mothers lacked adequate prenatal care, children who suffer from preventable diseases, children who have no homes and instead move from shelter to shelter and children whose lives are blighted by uncertainty, instability and fear. Foley deserves our disgust and condemnation, and so do the Republican congressional leaders who worried more about their reelection prospects than the welfare of the children under their care. But let's be honest: Foley's acts may have damaged the handful of boys unfortunate enough to have attracted his attention, but the damage to children caused by his abuse of power is still far, far less than the damage to American children caused by this Congress' disastrous mismanagement of the American economy. |
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