THE MANY WAYS TO BRIBE POLITICIANS
Written by Dagny D'Anconia
Sunday, 15 July 2007

We hear Harry Reid say "I believe myself that ... this war is lost and the surge is not accomplishing anything as indicated by the extreme violence in Iraq yesterday." [1] We see him doing everything in his power to aid and encourage our enemies, yet we hesitate to call him a traitor.

We call it an honest difference of opinion between fellow Americans. After all, if he were a traitor, wouldn't we have found suitcases of money, and bank accounts with checks from Arab sources?

What you need to know is that it really is very easy to secretly bribe public officials, and all this hoopla about effective campaign finance reform is just nonsensical window dressing. The disastrous McCain-Feingold legislation doesn't even scratch the surface of the undetectable bribery and influence peddling possibilities available.

Only real fools like Congressman Cold Cash Jefferson are stupid enough to keep cash in their freezer. Murtha and Pelosi have also been partly exposed because of their foolishness, and because they are drunk with power. Consider what a fool Duke Cunningham was played to be. Unfortunately only the idiots get caught while the moderately smart ones have a free hand.

There are numerous other ways to accept bribes which are undetectable. Take for example Bill Clinton: According to Dick Morris, Clinton is working for a company called Yucaipa Global Opportunities Fund 1 LLC which invests in overseas ventures and accepts capital from overseas. Bill Clinton receives regular payments from Yucaipa and would reportedly draw one-third of the profits when the fund is dissolved at least five years from now. Until it is liquidated he does not have to declare any income from it over $1,000. [2]

Furthermore, CalPERS (a public employee pension fund run by the State of California) decided earlier this year to invest up to $560 million with Yucaipa's funds. [3] Thus in effect, money from public employee pensions may be indirectly funneled to Clinton. Yucaipa has also poured money into Al Gore's Current Television venture which in itself is a who's who of Democrats and assorted Leftists. [4]

It is roughly one year until the 2008 election and then four years for a Hillary administration to rake in the bucks to the Yucaipa fund. The millions of dollars thus would become available to Bill and Hillary just about the time she left office. Any foreign nations or companies that want to do something for Bill and Hill in exchange for a favor from them can simply invest in Yucaipa. However, few of the financial gains become detectable until the liquidation and disbursement because of the privacy of the fund. What a racket! But it gets worse:

China recently changed their laws to allow the Chinese government to invest in funds - like Yucaipa - so the Chinese government would be able to pump up the Yucaipa fund's value as high as it wants using Chinese taxpayers as an inexhaustible source of money. The Chinese government has started with a 9% stake in Blackstone's IPO, but has indicated an interest in investing in other capital funds. [5]

Furthermore, the Chinese government is actively encouraging its largest security firms to invest their stock funds overseas. In May the China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC) issued regulations requiring qualified banks to invest up to 50 percent of their overseas investment in stocks. [6] Then in June the Chinese government eliminated the 50-percent limit on stock investment and introduced more diversified financial products. [7] Thus the large financial houses of China are being forced into investing in overseas company stocks.

Perhaps you remember the Clintons' Chinagate, and the weapons technology that was given to China during the Clinton administration:

"The Cox Report, which detailed Chinese espionage for Congress during the [Clinton Administration] period, revealed that FBI surveillance caught Chinese officials frantically trying to keep Democratic donor Johnny Chung from divulging any information that would be damaging to Hughes Electronics. Chung funneled $300,000 in illegal contributions from the Chinese military to the DNC between 1994 and 1996. ... It was this web of investigations that led Gorelick and Bill Clinton to erect the wall between intelligence agencies that resulted in the toppling of the Twin Towers." [8]

In other words, the infamous intelligence wall was created to keep the Clinton cronies from being investigated and prosecuted for the treason of accepting bribes from China and then giving them vital defense technology. This demonstrates how financially and politically incestuous the relationships are between the Democrats and the Chinese government. [9]

With this new technique of investing in companies like Yucaipa, the Chinese government can have an effect on any number of strategically valuable companies. That includes companies that are militarily strategic as well as politically strategic.

If Hillary wins the White House, the scale of graft that may ensue is down right megalomaniacal. The money they stand to gain from the stock gambit is in addition to the money put into the Clinton Library or the William J. Clinton Foundation by foreign interests, which is also available for any number of uses at Bill Clinton's discretion. There are also speakers' fees:

"Bill Clinton, who came to the White House with modest means and left deeply in debt, has collected nearly $40 million in speaking fees over the past six years ... Last year, one of his most lucrative since he left the presidency, Clinton earned $9 million to $10 million on the lecture circuit. ... On one particularly good day in Canada, Clinton made $475,000 for two speeches, more than double his annual salary as president. ... The banking firm Citigroup, whose employees and PAC have been Hillary Clinton's top source of campaign donations, with more than $320,000, paid her husband $250,000 for a speech in France in 2004." [10]

There are also the seven figure book deals that were arranged for the Clintons. But that is not all. Bribes can also be put into bank accounts that are not detectable. One of Jack Abramoff's gambits was to have a lawyer in Laguna Beach California accept money from Guam and pass it on to him thus laundering it to make it look legitimate.[11]

It was made public because the lawyer got cold feet (or had a moral epiphany), came forward and sold out his "subcontractor" Abramoff. Normally the lawyer involved would not come forward so the funds are kept secret. Shell corporations and trusts serve a similar purpose for laundering the sources of money when there is a reason to keep it secret or "private".

Another technique is to have an overseas entity hold the money in its name for the person until after he or she is out of office, and disburse it as needed then. Accounts can be set up in foreign countries with agents to manage it. Who would ever know? No checks are written, and no money need be wired anywhere. It sits there inert until after the apparent conflict of interest is in the past.

If a politician owns or controls a residence outside the US, that makes it even easier. The people and accounts involved are not subject to investigation as easily by authorities such as the IRS etc. in the US, so in some ways it is easier to bribe a politician through a foreign company from outside the US than it would be from an American one.

It is also easier to bribe an anonymous advisor than a big shot politician. Today politicians are too busy to study issues carefully or even read legislation. They rely on friends, aides, and handlers to help them make decisions. When a poor little nobody aide is bribed to push legislation one way or another it is a bigger temptation than for an already wealthy and important politician. The incentive to investigate the aide is also less because he is not an important target like his politician boss.

As you can see, there are innumerable ways to bribe a politician or their aides on a grand scale and have it be undetectable and/or legal. We may be in the habit of giving politicians the benefit of the doubt, but in today's world that may not be reasonable. If it walks like a traitor, and quacks like a traitor, it may be a traitor - and possibly a very rich one.

However, as you will see in Part 2 - The Dominican Connection, the games that are afoot are now on a truly mind boggling scale that dwarfs Chinagate. Once these connections are laid out, a many recent inexplicable political events will suddenly make a lot more sense.

IRAQ, SAUDI ARABIA SIGN SECURITY AGREEMENTS. Iraqi national security adviser Muwaffaq al-Rubay'i announced on July 15 that Iraq and Saudi Arabia have reached an agreement on coordinating antiterrorism operations, state-run Al-Iraqiyah television reported. "We are happy with the positive and constructive results which our talks and negotiations with our brothers in Saudi Arabia yielded," al-Rubay'i said. "The heads of Iraqi agencies had several rounds of discussions and reached detailed agreements on security cooperation with their Saudi counterparts. We signed agreements on security and intelligence coordination and information exchange," he added. The Saudi daily "Okaz" also quoted al-Rubay'i as saying that Iraq's security is inseparable from regional security, and "whatever threatens neighboring countries, namely Saudi Arabia, constitutes a direct threat against Iraq." SS

IRAQI OFFICIAL SAYS 'CHEMICAL ALI' TO BE HANGED IN HALABJAH. Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salah said on July 14 that Ali Hasan al-Majid, also known as "Chemical Ali", will be executed in the northern town of Halabjah, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan's website reported. Salah made the remarks during a meeting with families of the Halabjah Victims Society in Al-Sulaymaniyah. On June 24, the Iraqi High Tribunal sentenced al-Majid and two co-defendants to death for their role in the 1987-88 Anfal campaign that prosecutors said killed up to 180,000 Kurds (see "RFE/RL Newsline," June 25, 2007). An appeals court is currently reviewing the sentence, and if it certifies the ruling, under Iraqi law, al-Majid will have to be executed within 30 days. However, the Anfal trial did not cover the gas attack that killed an estimated 5,000 people in the town of Halabjah. Those killings are to be the focus of a separate trial to be held at an unspecified date. Many residents of Halabjah fear that they may never see justice carried out. SS

U.S., IRAQI FORCES KILL ROGUE MILITIA LEADER IN BAGHDAD. The U.S. military announced on July 14 that Sa'id Jaf'ar, a rogue commander in radical Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's militia, the Imam Al-Mahdi Army, was killed during a joint U.S.-Iraqi security operation in Baghdad on July 11. The military described Jaf'ar as having a "history of terrorizing the New Baghdad area by extorting money, kidnapping, and carrying out extrajudicial killings on innocent citizens." "As a commander of more than 120 fighters, his cell is responsible for engaging military and police forces with small-arms fire and emplacing explosively formed projectiles along travel routes," the U.S. military said in a statement. The military also accused Jaf'ar of being a commander of a "special unit" with links to Iran. "Intelligence shows a clear link to his group partnering with outside Persian extremists, whose goal is to destroy the legitimate government of Iraq and create instability in the region," the statement said. The United States has repeatedly accused Tehran of training and arming Shi'ite militias in Iraq. On July 12, the U.S. military reported that its forces clashed with an "Iranian-backed militia" in the Baghdad neighborhood of Al-Amin (see "RFE/RL Newsline," July 13, 2007). SS

IRAQI KURDISH LAWMAKER REJECTS U.S. PRESSURE TO PASS OIL LAW. Mahmud Uthman, a prominent member of the Kurdish Alliance, has voiced anger and frustration at what he described as unwarranted U.S. pressure on the Iraqi government to pass a draft oil and gas law, Al-Sharqiyah television reported on July 14. "We hope that the U.S. pressure on Iraq to ratify the law will stop, because this pressure is increasing and will backfire," Uthman said. He continued, "We hope that all parliamentary blocs will be represented in the parliament, including the Al-Tawafuq [Accordance] Front and the Al-Sadr bloc." The Accordance Front, the largest Sunni political bloc in parliament, and the Al-Sadr bloc are currently boycotting parliament and the Iraqi government. There have been reports that the two blocs may end their boycott in order to vote against the draft law. In addition, Uthman said the Kurds have several reservations concerning the oil and gas draft because of amendments added to it. He did not mention what those reservations are, but he said he doubts that the draft will be ratified by the end of July, before the Iraqi government begins its monthlong recess. SS