I know that diehard Clinton supporters probably won’t believe this guy, but he was a committed Clinton super-delegate and so when he says this, disgruntled or not, I tend to believe him:
Rep. Rob Andrews, who supported Hillary Clinton throughout the primary season, disclosed he received a phone call shortly before the April 22 Pennsylvania primary from a top member of Clinton’s organization and that the caller explicitly discussed a strategy of winning Jewish voters by exploiting tensions between Jews and African-Americans.
“There have been signals coming out of the Clinton campaign that have racial overtones that indeed disturb me,” Andrews said at his campaign headquarters in Cherry Hill Tuesday night after he lost his bid for the U.S. Senate nomination. “Frankly, I had a private conversation with a high-ranking person in the campaign … that used a racial line of argument that I found very disconcerting. It was extremely disconcerting given the rank of this person. It was very disturbing.”
Andrews said the phone call came after he angered the Clinton camp by making some positive comments about Obama. He would not disclose the caller’s name because of the private nature of the conversation.
Obviously he’s coming out now because his support for Clinton didn’t help him win the primary and so he no longer has any reason to fear payback. And just as obviously it would have been a much more courageous move to disclose this call back when it happened in April, rather than now in June, when the race is over and it serves little point. Still, it demonstrates that Obama supporters were not delusional about all the racial crap coming from the Clinton camp. This is simply more proof that the tale being told among Clinton supporters that Obama was the one who played the “race card” was as false as every other spurious charge they have slung at him and Michelle.
People, Hillary Clinton would not have served this country well if she had been elected President. This is the type of politics you expect from the Lee Atwaters and Karl Roves and Richard Nixons of the world. To pit Jewish Americans and African Americans, two critical and essential partners in the modern liberal coalition, and former allies in the fight for civil rights, against each other for personal political gain is about as toxic a political stratagem as any person, much less from the one time leading Democratic contender for the Presidency and still extremely popular former First Lady, could employ.
To steal a phrase from Scott McClellan, her Presidency would have been more of the “permanent campaign” that marked and marred the Bush years, and which have led our country down the path to ruination, economically, politically, morally and in every other way imaginable. Nor should she be offered the position of Vice President under Obama. Regardless of her superior intelligence, ability to engage in political in-fighting ability, capacity for hard work and sheer, raw determination, she should never be given the opportunity to sit in the Oval Office as the head of the Executive Branch of the Federal Government. Let her find another means to serve her ambition and her country.
I don’t know if her core personality was always like this, or if the long years of vicious attacks by the right wing during the past 30 years and marriage to a flawed, philandering husband reforged her character into the cynical, hardened and narcissistic person she has become. I suppose it doesn’t really matter now. I don’t even feel outrage anymore. It’s simply just a sad, sorry end to what could have been.
Strangely her campaign appeared to me to not just pit blacks against Jews but blacks against Hispanics, young vs old – whether she was compartmentalizing us or segregating us, them vs us mentality. Then during the caucus’s she started that strange meme that it was unfair to ‘her’ supporters because they were working class/shift workers that couldn’t attend. I always got the feeling her strategy of divide and conquer was reminiscent of Bush’s ‘you’re either for us or against us’. Obama’s ‘together we can do it’ was a welcoming challenge that simply reminded of how powerful we can be together. I kinda like together.
Let us not forget blacks against white women.
At a certain point around Super Tuesday she switched from divide and conquer to divide. It’s hard for me to believe that Clinton was in any way delusional. Every step of the way she played it the way she played it.
One aspect that has received more discussion in the past week is that Hillary was both accountable and responsible for the tenor of her campaign. Otherwise, for much of the past few months, the negative stuff mostly had been blamed on members of her team.
It now seems more plainly evident that the campaign and its message was executed per her directions. Her Tuesday speech was the final bit of evidence that many needed.
Perhaps the lingering area of doubt is what type of active role Bill played in strategy. If his statements to Charlie Rose from last Fall (December?) are credible, Bill advised early against HRC campaigning in IA…and he turned out to be right about that. That his advice was ignored is indicative that he didn’t have an overriding role.
Yeah, I definitely got the divide and conquer vibe from Hillaryland.
Granted the Clintons leave a lot to be desired on the scales of human decency and political and moral responsibility, but I don’t think Rep Andrews is a beacon of hope when it comes to rectitude and honesty itself. Why did he wait so long before blowing the whistle? He kind of give politicians a bad name.
Maybe, they deserve it.
In the event that Clinton got the nomination and was elected Andrews would have been screwed if he’d leaked any information.
So what was H. Clinton’s relationship with Frank Lautenberg? And what was her relationship with Andrews.
As far as heroics from politicians, and humans generally, I’ve seen a lot of more cowardice than heroics in my life. I’ve seen a lot of people who take the easy way and live to comingle another day.
Fine, but that’shardly the issue. The point is how Hillary conducted her campaign for the presidency, not Rep. Andrews. The point is, he has now made this public, and unless you’re suggesting he’s not telling the truth — and if so, you’ll have to do more than just suggest — Andrews’ statement helps to explain what so many of us sensed about her lousy campaign.
The permanent campaign was a term I remember being coined during the Clinton administration. Stephanopolis IIRC and it wasn’t considered a bad thing.
It is now seen as a poor substitute for leadership and vision.
Anyway, here in Jersey Andrews is no saint. No one is except maybe Newark Mayor Booker and he’s on a short leash.
Still I have little doubt Andrews is telling the truth. I just wish he would name names. Produce the memo. Is this stink on Clinton or some higher up or higher ups in the Jersey DC? Makes a difference. Seems he is doing this more to his gain than anything else.
I spent my early years in New Jersey but I was young and paid no attention. I can barely remember Hugh Addonizio.
I lived in Jersey for a few years, at the far other end of the state from Newark. I couldn’t tell you who any of our elected officials at the time were. That wasn’t even on my radar in those days.
Down on the Jersey shore, Monmouth County, in Springsteenland. And for that matter, Bon Jovi Land too.
what’s really sad, is that this kind of campaigning works, but that’s the reality, and it doesn’t speak highly to the attitudes and prejudices of americans in general. granted, obama’s message of hope and unity won the day, but it was close.
there’s a lot of hard work to be done in order to put obama in the house at 1600 pennsylvania ave, and get a solid democratic congress elected.
it’s time to move forward and put hillary behind us.
I think she and Bill both were terribly injured by the constant stream of vicious attacks on them, culminating in the impeachment, but lasting after the election when Bill was banned from pleading before the Supreme Court. Every now and then one would get a peak of her earlier character, but the ride toughened her in ways that are unlikeable. She has a tin ear for the American psyche, and had she been elected — as I am sure she would have be if nominated — her presidency would have been deeply flawed.
We are heading into extremely troubled economic waters. The sharp rise in the unemployment rate, the crash today on the NYSE, the surge of oil prices, the falling dollar, the housing debacle — everything happening at once, and none of it good. We haven’t been in this territory since the early 1930s. It will take more persuasiveness than she can muster to tide us through the terrible times that are about to fall on us.
Sorry to be so negative about the current state of the US, but that was always in my mind when I considered the candidates. Both Edwards and Obama had the rhetorical skills and capacity for learning and adjustment that Clinton lacks.
It is incredibly sad. The Clintons did a good job of raising their daughter in that maelstrom, which says something about their basic decency.
I’m not ready to believe that the Clintons slid down the moral pole because Republicans were mean. In fact, there is an odd relationship between the Clintons and the Republicans. His ghastly legislation was all bi-partisan: him, the rightie Dems and the Repubs. Of all the Democrats, the Repubs should have loved them the most.
Clintons in retrospective:
Him. What bothers me most about the Lewinsky affair — Bill knew the goopers were gunning for him. He knew they were watching for the slightest misstep, especially concerning sex. So he just went and did it. Pure self-destruction.
Her. I am so sick of hearing about Hillary and how this campaign has been all about feminism and how she was defeated by the resurgent forces of misogyny. This is BS. Sure, there were issues. But as these Andrews allegations show, it’s just one more utensil in the kitchen sink that she decided she could throw at Obama and cynically milk for all she could get. Anything the Bushies didn’t do to leave us weak and divided, the Clintons managed to find.
Self-destruction? I’m not so sure. Bill’s little infidelity and subsequently sketchy testimony did a nice little number on Gore’s chances in 2000. More bipartisan cooperation from the Clintons, perhaps?
I thought the charges of the Clintons exploiting race were overblown (except for Ferraro, who I didn’t blame Clinton for), right up until the point just after North Carolina and just before West Virginia where Clinton and her surrogates suddenly started making the argument she was more electable because she appealed to white working class voters, and that was the demographic we needed to win. Even I couldn’t miss that; I was shocked. After that, something like this is sad, but I don’t need it to confirm my impressions. What the campaign said in public unapologetically was plain enough.
The stuff right before WV was what has been coming out of her campaign since Dec. but some people chose to ignore it. I’m stunned by people who say that the NC comments were the turning point. It was a race-baiting campaign for 5 months and those of us who heard it, saw it, were told we were “imagining” things.
What I am fascinated with is Obama’s ability to ‘shed’ scurilous taunts and it seemed that every time Hillary or Bill or a surrogate tried to remind America that Obama was, after all, a black man, that he was able to turn this into the best response which was yes indeed I am a smart, judicious man – he taught even the most stone dead stupids that race baiting just plain wasn’t relevant. We became better people because of how he handled the taunts.
What was poor judgment was that the slur tossers just dug deeper, they didn’t figure out that Obama was getting stronger with each bait.
I found the claims of how sexism worked against H. Clinton to be unproven. Not the general sexism of society, mind you, which works against all women, but the specific incidents. For ex, the “Iron My Shirt” thing helped Clinton. It made a great springboard for New Hampshire, along with Steinem’s “women have it harder than black people,” a particularly stupid and divisive op-ed. Things like Shuster’s dumb “the Clintons pimp Chelsea” incident only energized a portion of her base and further divided the Dems.
Notice the different ways that Clinton and Obama handled such eruptions. Clinton and her people rode the Shuster thing as far as they could. Obama, regarding how he had an advantage being black, essentially laughed it off.
I was playing extra-close attention to South Carolina because I have in-laws there and am a little familiar with it, and I couldn’t believe the nasty that came out of Bill’s mouth. I checked the wording and the context, and there was no mistaking it.
At first I figured what he said didn’t necessarily echo her, but after a week or two without the strong statement from Hillary I wanted, I was off the fence and in Obamaville.
So SC was the decisive moment for me. I didn’t notice anything untoward before then.
She had all the buttons and she was punching them. The CIA calls it the Mighty Wurlitzer. Maybe for Clinton it was a Casiotone.
This is simply more proof that the tale being told among Clinton supporters that Obama was the one who played the “race card” was as false as every other spurious charge they have slung at him and Michelle.
How is this proof that Obama did not play the race card?
It’s proof that CLINTON played the race card.
I don’t think Obama played the race card. But this statement does nothing to prove or disprove that he did or didn’t. It does say alot about the Clinton team though.
A subset of voters was identified in the WVa primary who considered race to be important when casting a vote. In WVa that subset was 22% of the voters.
I suspect that subset exists in all states with varying percentages which brings me to FL.
Fl down to almost Orlando is very similar to GA and voters of the subset will be higher there than in Southern Florida.
Southern FL, Orlando and below, have a large number of 65 or older citizens and history has shown they turn out to vote.
Obama has not been able to connect with these voters and I don’t know if it is a question of race or not addressing issues important to seniors.
Additionally there are a large number of Jewish voters in lower FL and Joe Liberman will be very successful in his efforts to sway their votes.
My take is that if Obama loses FL, he will be in big trouble and that subset of race voters will make a difference in battleground states where previous elections have turned on thousands of votes not whole percentages.
I don’t have a lot of confidence in Generation Y turning out to vote in big numbers because many think the Fall election is just a formality since Clinton has been defeated and history has shown they do not turn out in numbers.
Just my two cents….
And this is why Obama is creating a strategy concentrating on the Mountain West and the Upper Midwest where white working class voters don’t seem to care much about coded race messages and seem to be getting fed up with repubs. After all, Florida didn’t do Al Gore a helluva lot of good, even though he actually won it.
you really think the white, working class [code word for racists] is going to vote for more with mc/same?
read this:
you can parse lieberman’s influence, vis=a-vis aipac, orwhat ever boogieman you prefer…the bottom line is people are hurting, and it’s not going to improve anytime soon with BushCo™ in charge. the GE campaign’s just starting, and given the results of the primaries, l think they’re going to vote for change…and they don’t care what colour it is.
my 2¢
h/t to idredit
Why would Obama be in trouble if he lost Florida? Obama’s not likely to win Florida for the same reason Kerry wasn’t: Florida is a conservative state. There are a few liberal strongholds — Palm/Broward/Miami-Dade, Tallahassee, Tampon Bay, etc — but the state is generally full of dumb rednecks, fascist exiles and rich retirees from the North.
And, again, Obama not winning groups in the primaries does not equate to not winning them in the general. Look at the Gallup polling on Latinos and Jews for your evidence. Obama connects with these people just fine. Stop buying into Clintard propaganda.
Finally, what history on Gen-Y are you basing that assertion on? They’ve only been around to vote in one presidential election (2004), and you’ll recall the youth vote went over 50% that year. The history shows quite the opposite of what you claim, as does all academic research relating to Gen-Y’s views and attitudes.
we have a disgruntled politician with no source
how many times are we going to let anonymous sources jerk our chain?
It’s like any other information. You weigh it, you look for confirmation, you look for consistency with other facts in evidence. “Hard working white people.” Hmm, that’s consistent. Bill Clinton’s performance in SC? Consistent.
Andrews is not an anonymous source either.
Let’s not forget that Hillary was president of the Wellesley Young Republicans during her freshman year. Anyone coming from a Republican family with any brains or a soul stops being a Republican when they enter puberty, that is, when they begin thinking for themselves. So Hillary Clinton was never an authentic Democrat.
Thus, there is nothing to be sad about.
And is part of Reverend Coe’s cult, with Inhofe, Brownback, etc.
Did this book ever get talking heads time? I haven’t been watching any TV, so I don’t know, but there hasn’t been any echo on the left blogosphere, so I’m wondering.
It disappeared. The guy isn’t even appearing on semi-lefty radio talk shows like on the Jones Network or Air America. Just from getting 25 pages into the book (I started reading it on the trail yesterday) it struck me as something that the media doesn’t want to talk about, power arrangements that are supposed to remain invisible to the hoi polloi. I suspected as much when Sharlet’s Mother Jones article was missing in action when the press had no fear venturing into Reverend Wright and Hagee territory but would not broach The Family. What’s good for the goose… hey, where the hell did the gander go?
We’d probably hear a lot about it if Clinton had won the nomination.
I really hope you’re kidding about this and I’m just missing it.
I’m not going to debate whether Hillary was ever an “authentic Democrat”; my point here is that the Republican Party now is way far to the right of what it was 50 years ago, so your “puberty” rule is pointless, certainly for people growing up in my parents’ generation.
My mother grew up Republican, as did her mother, but my mom eventually — as an adult — changed parties, and for as long as I can remember has been as much of a true progressive Democrat as you could ever hope to meet.
Think what you will about Hillary, but please don’t generalize by painting “anyone” with the same brush. People become Democrats at many times in life and for many reasons. Let’s just be glad when they do!
It was respectable to be a Republican when Eisenhower (not to mention Lincoln!) was president. So, I’m sorry for not qualifying my “puberty rule”.
I think that the puberty rule does apply to Clinton’s generation, however. Hillary was a Goldwater Republican, and that was always beyond the pale for all civilized people.
Thus, I stand by my point about Hillary, but your other point about how we should be glad whenever a Republican comes to their senses, no matter how late in life, is well taken.
I was raised in a Republican household, by immigrants from Russia. I don’t blame my parents for having been Republicans, because they associated Democrats with Communism, the way Cuban Americans do today. But simply from getting a decent high school education, it was completely clear to me by the time I could vote that the Republican Party has nothing positive to offer. Being a Democrat is simply part of being a literate American. If Hillary Clinton were a decent, intelligent person, she would have seen that too by the time she went off to college.
The Great Orange Satan is a converted Republican for Pete’s sake. … Jim Webb danced with the dark side for a few years .. Arianna Huffington used to dance with the dark side .. while yes .. Clinton’s Goldwater Girl days concern me .. it’s not an automatic deal breaker
I have two responses. First, as a matter of PSYOPS, I think that it would be good for more Dems to embrace my way of thinking. We must work to marginalize Republicans and regressives (what the corporate media calls “conservatives”), and one way to do that is to continually suggest that Republicans are somehow un-American, the way they have been doing with us since Reagan.
Second, I see Kos and Arianna Huffington (I actually thought of her when I was waking my post) as analogous to my parents: not having been born and raised in the US, they had no way of knowing how primitive, reactionary, and hateful the Republican Party actually is. As for Jim Webb, being a military man, I suppose he came from a Republican family, and as I noted, being a Republican was perfectly respectable in Eisenhower’s day.
So yes, as a general rule, someone having been a Republican should be seen as an automatic deal breaker, provided that one cannot produce excuses for their having made that error, as I have for the three cases you mentioned.
The important thing to see here is that the Republicans are the American equivalent of Nazis, as has been utterly clear since the Republicans “disabled” American democracy in 2000 by stealing elections and started launching unprovoked wars, as Hitler did on Poland. Once the Nazis were overthrown, former Nazis could be integrated into German society, even into government, if they were properly “denazified”. That must be our attitude to Republicans.
I agree with you, Alexander. I was born during the Korean War, so I’m near H. Clinton’s age. The question isn’t whether you, I or any other poster evolved from a Republican family/cultural background to become a Democrat. It’s whether H. Clinton evolved, and how so. When you become famous, especially when you are a politician, you play a big part in writing your own history, and that history is going to project what you want it to reflect. I don’t think you get a complete picture of Hillary with her own reflections on herself any more than you get an honest bio of her from Roger Stone.
This is what I suspect: H. Clinton was always someone who sought power. Her relationship was not only romantic but a political merger of sorts. Bill understood the halls of power from before he got his Rhodes scholarship. He knew the game.
Hillary’s path was more ambiguous but still seemed to go places where she would be useful for the elite. The summer she spent in Oakland working for a radical law firm that was defending Black Panthers, etc., put her in the perfect position to feed back information to intelligence services (CIA, FBI) about pending cases.
This was at the height of the original “Operation Chaos,” where the CIA was penetrating anti-war, black power and feminist groups. This was the period when Gloria Steinem admitted in the NY Times that she had run a CIA propaganda unit (but didn’t admit her spy work) within the student movement, this right before she shed that history and became a “feminist” and began publishing MS with the help of Clay Felker, another CIA protege. We also discover from their joint bio that Steve and Cokie Roberts worked under Steinem in this CIA propaganda psyops.
At the same time that H. Clinton was working at that radical law firm Warren Christopher was working for J. Edgar Hoover in COINTELPRO. Curious how that generation comes to rule farther down the road.
When H. Clinton became an attorney for the Democratic staff for Watergate, she was in a perfect position to get and leak information to the Agency about what the Dems knew and how they played the case. If. I mention this because there is a theory that says that Watergate was a coup by the CIA to topple Nixon, who was getting too much power and was stepping on the CIA’s drug trade. If you look at a witness list for Watergate you will find a lot of “ex” CIA people who “turned” and testified against Nixon. Even that “great” investigative reporter Bob Woodward had only recently before his job with the WaPo been with ONI (Office of Naval Intelligence) at the Pentagon with top secret clearance. Then he began working for his editor Ben Bradlee, who himself had worked out of the CIA’s Paris offices in the early fifties to spread anti-Rosenberg propaganda.
During Bill Clinton’s second time as governor of Arkansas the drug war opened a front around Mena. Asa Hutchinson was the federal prosecutor in the area, and his inability to find the loads of cocaine which were flown in by people with long histories of flying things for the CIA earned him the position of drug czar for Dubya. If, as rumors have it, the governor was protecting the drug trade, that would put him among very interesting company.
It would also explain Bill’s pro-corporate presidency. If the CIA is anything it’s the International Pinkertons for the corporatists. This would even explain the blossoming of support for Hillary this year by “ex” CIA people: Gloria Steinem’s racially divisive op-ed for Hillary just before the New Hampshire primary. Larry Johnson’s racially divisive self all year. Look around, I bet there’s more. A lot more.
Just saying.
Wow. I never heard that Gloria Steinem used to work for the CIA. That certainly explains how she could back someone like Hillary for president.
As far as I know however, there is no evidence at all for either Clinton having any CIA connections. Why Bill Clinton’s presidency was pro-corporate can easily be explained without bringing the CIA into it. Clinton was simply moving along with the neoliberal tide of the time.
Google “Steinem” and “Redstockings,” who were a radical leftist feminist group of the late sixties, early seventies. I believe the Steinem interview in the NY Times was 2-21-67 if you’ve got the time and have a a library with NYT microfilms nearby.
You might also reflect about how well the MSM has avoided the topic over the decades. Likewise, think about how Warren Christopher functioned over the years in various Democratic Administrations without you (thanks to the MSM) connecting him to J. Edgar Hoover’s most disgusting excesses.
When you have time read Daniel Brandt’s article on Bill Clinton here:
http://www.namebase.org/news01.html
Here’s an article on Steinem by Brandt:
http://www.namebase.org/steinem.html
I think that being a child of the sixties and witnessing government infiltration of political movements helps to see the continuing, evolving process over the decades.
oooohhhhhhh my head is going to explode….this man is a lying sack of shit…hes a total whack job….i know him personally and worked on his first campaign…..please god will this ever end? seriously please dont feed this fire…..its over…..we have a nominee…..he is the unity candidate…..there are tons of crazy people out there who have all kinds of motives and agendas…..we really need to focus now on the future and the fight against the republicans….i dont care if its true/……i think as much of anything rob andrews says as i think of anything i read at no quarter….its all the same crap….please for the love of god can we please move on.
Good advice Anna, we have a president to elect.
Aren’t we moving on?
But unless H. Clinton has joined a nunnery I suspect she’ll be around for awhile. The media are still talking about her. I understand the mewlishness of some former Clinton backers, but uncomfortable things about people of power should be noted.
uncomfortable things about people of power?
its a rumor and unsourced and a back stabbing whisper campaign by a certified jerk off….just like the obama in the limo with the drug addict getting a blow job and michelle at the conferance sitting next to farrakhan and hating on whitey….my objections all along in this campaign were that the bloggers from both sides were demonizing the other candidates with tons of spin and bullshit…and id like to see it end…or at least see it end on the blogs i bother to go to anymore.
But isn’t Andrews the source? So the story is not unsourced. If the guy is a jerkoff, to what purpose would he say that Clinton staffers were racists, or attempting to use racism? Quo bono? Is he now an agent of Obama? That’s unlikely but I’m willing to hear a motive.
and all the pretty people
They’re drinkin’, thinkin’ that they got it made
Exchanging all kinds of precious gifts and things
But you’d better lift your diamond ring,
you’d better pawn it babe
You used to be so amused
At Napoleon in rags and the language that he used
Go to him now, he calls you, you can’t refuse
When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose
You’re invisible now, you got no secrets to conceal.
How does it feel?
Wow. That really fits.
I’m part of a ClintonAttacksObama Wiki that’s up to 50 incidents. They’ve been racebaiting since Billy Shaheen.
Black against White
Black against Hispanic
OF COURSE it’s Black against Jew
Just WHO do you think has been spreading the ‘ Obama has problems with The Jews’ memo every 10 – 14 days during this campaign season.
Here’s a commentary from an American Prospect article:
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=seven_ways_hillary_clinton_changed_our_politics
I thought one more excerpt would be in order. This one is from an article in the New Yorker by George Packer called “The Fall of Conservatism.” Packer cites Rick Perlstein on the subject of a memo produced by Patrick Buchanan for Nixon outlining what would now be known as “triangulation” (Clinton) or “splitter” strategy (Rove).
It may be alarming, as well it should be, that the strategy used by the Clinton campaign is the same one used by the Nixon campaign to divide the country and win the Presidency for Nixon. It’s better known as the “Southern strategy,” but there’s much more to it than race politics.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/05/26/080526fa_fact_packer?currentPage=all
She ran like a Republican because…
Well, aside from the “(D)” what again made her a Democrat? Because she screwed up an attempt at making health insurance legislation?
Operation Chaos is still in full swing, and the rejoicing Dems are not even noticing. Most of the folks who are claiming to be “Clinton Supporters for Obama” are not even Democrats. Most have never given a dime to Clinton. Some are certifiably Republican rabble rousers. Yet MSM (including HuffPo) are publishing stories about their efforts.
How much of Clinton’s support was Republican wishful thinking? I do know that the movie they worked so hard on, about the Clinton financial scandals, is not going to get much play this fall.
Speaking of old history, how about lots of air time for the antics of the Keating Five this fall?
Since the sixties many if not most of these financial ripoffs were done with the aid of CIA-connected people. When Reagan was elected VP GHW Bush was put in charge of three task forces. There was the South Florida drug task force (you know the first beach head for cocaine, what with those cigarette boats), S & L deregulation. I forget the third task force.
What happened to BCCI? What happened to Nugan Hand? The best way to rob a bank is to own it. What did mobsters call it? Bust outs. Didn’t Bill’s deregulations of banking and trading (hedge funder Chelsea says thanks, Dad) bring about our current economic dismay?