BREAKING NEWS: White House says a presidential aide has resigned after engaging in improprieties

[underpants]

Source: MSNBC

BREAKING NEWS: White House says a presidential aide has resigned after engaging in improprieties using USAID grant money

updated 22 minutes ago
WASHINGTON - The White House says an aide to President Bush has resigned because of the alleged misuse of grant money from U.S. Agency for International Development.

Presidential spokesman Scott Stanzel says the former aide, Felipe Sixto, had been a special assistant to the president for intergovernmental affairs. Stanzel said Sixto was promoted to that position on March 1 and that he came forward on March 20 to tell his superiors about the alleged wrongdoing.

Stanzel said it involved improprieties involving the use of grant money and Sixto's former employer, the Center for a Free Cuba. Stanzel says the matter has been turned over to the Justice Department.



Read more: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23847990/

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

1. Center for a Free Cuba?

Hmmm.

[Ichingcarpenter]

8. Center for a Free Cuba? -that one also red flagged me

From SourceWatch


The Center for a Free Cuba (CFC) "is an independent, non-partisan institution dedicated to promoting human rights and a transition to democracy and the rule of law on the island. Established in November 1997, the Center gathers and disseminates information about Cuba and Cubans to the media, NGOs, and the international community. The Center also assists the people of Cuba through its information outreach and humanitarian programs on the island. The Center has received a 501(c)(3) exemption from the Internal Revenue Service. Contributions to the Center are tax deductible." <1>


http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Center_for_a_Free_Cuba


The Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba was established by President Bush on October 10, 2003 "to explore ways the U.S. can help hasten and ease a democratic transition in Cuba." Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice reconvened the Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba on December 19, 2005, and the Commissin released its second report on July 5, 2006. The U.S. Government's Cuba Transition Coordinator, Caleb C. McCarry, oversees the day-to-day operations of the Commission (in the past he has worked for The Center for Democracy.)


http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Commission_for_Assistance_to_a_Free_Cuba



Like many ‘democracy promoting’ organizations the Center for a Free Cuba (CFC) – which was formed in November 1997 – sounds like an innocuous democracy-loving group, and it describes itself as an “independent, non-partisan institution dedicated to promoting human rights and a transition to democracy and the rule of law on the island ”. However, the Center’s choice of Frank Calzon as their executive director makes easy to understand the type of democracy they are interested in promoting, as for the ten years prior to starting work at the CFC Calzon had worked as the Washington representative for the neoconservative Freedom House. Calzon is also a former director of the infamous Cuban-American National Foundation CANF – another non-profit group that was formed in 1981 to advance “freedom and democracy in Cuba”.

Here it is critical to note that CANF’s ex-president, Jose S. Sorzano, previously served as a director of the Center for International Private Enterprise <5> – which is one of the NED’s four core grantees – and he formerly acted as an aide to former CFC director, the late Ambassador Jeane J. Kirkpatrick. CANF is also directly linked to CFC through retired chief executive of Bacardi, Manuel J. Cutillas, who is a former chair of CANF’s board of directors, and is currently a director of CFC.<6> (Cutillas is also presently a trustee of the Free Enterprise Foundation, where he sits next to ‘democratic’ notable Edwin Meese III.)

Other interesting ‘democratic’ CFC directors include Nestor T. Carbonell (who is also a director of the Council of the Americas, is a member of the board of overseers of the International Rescue Committee, and serves on the advisory board of the Cuba Archive – an organization that is supported by Freedom House), Jeronimo Esteve-Abril (who serves on the advisory board of the Cuba Archive, and is a former CANF director), and Susan Kaufman Purcell (who is the vice president of both the Council of the Americas and the Americas Society, serves on the advisory council of the International Executive Service Corps, serves on the advisory council of the Inter-American Foundation (in 2004 at least), is a former trustee of Freedom House, and a former member of the editorial board of the NED’s Journal of Democracy).

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=14042

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

19. CANF 2.0

Got it.

[greiner3]

31. to explore ways the U.S. can help hasten and ease a democratic transition in Cuba

Holy shit! Asshole's going to invade Cuba!

[starroute]

32. Center for a Free Cuba and the International Republican Institute

This is from an article on the International Republican Institute (IRI), the chair of whose board of directors, interestingly, is John McCain.

http://www.coha.org/2004/07/15/the-international-republican-institute-promulgating-democracy-of-another-variety/

USAID, which funded the IRI’s previous programs in Cuba from 1997 to 2002 with millions of dollars, simultaneously financed a number of other organizations theoretically devoted to democracy-building in Cuba, including the Center for a Free Cuba. Such programs represent an audacious raid on the U.S. Treasury and are little better than bag money given as a payoff to pro-Bush partisans who are being rewarded for getting out the vote. Current and past board members of the Center include Kirkpatrick, Otto Reich—whose membership in such a virulently anti-Havana organization would seem to constitute a clear conflict of interest with his public duties, recently ended, as a former interim Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs and subsequently as special presidential envoy to the hemisphere—and, not surprisingly, Georges Fauriol, vice-president and resident Latin American expert at the IRI. The CFC has a vague mission curiously akin to that of the Directorio, stating that it “gathers and disseminates information about Cuba and Cubans to the media, NGOs and the international community.”

The IRI’s work, which essentially amounts to the energetic propagandizing of a, distinctly skewed perception of Cuba’s current geopolitical realities hardly seems to be a “democracy building” activity of sufficient worth to warrant the allocation of a torrent of federal funds. Rather, it projects a picture whereby the IRI, in conjunction with the NED and USAID, plays the role of a cash cow, lavishing taxpayer funds on rump Cuban-American groups that generate no particular product other than the trumpeting of their own hard-line pitch. It should be asked, what any of these somewhat low grade archly sectarian propaganda groups have to do with the promotion of democracy in Cuba.

Behind this network of Cuban-American organizations, funded by the NED and the IRI, and led and supported by an array of ultra-conservative Republican figures, lies a clear political intent that is far different from simple “democracy promotion” in today’s Cuba. On the contrary, the goal of the generous funding for these organizations is to cement the Republican loyalty of some of the most wealthy and powerful members of the U.S.-based Cuban community, whose leadership eagerly defends the interests of such organizations in each funding cycle of the IRI and NED grant making. The IRI played an important role in paving the way for Governor Jeb Bush’s rise to power in Florida, appointing him as co-chair of an IRI “Cuba Transition Team” in 1995 after he lost his first race for governor of Florida. This position helped allow him to build the strong ties he maintains to this day with the most conservative faction of Florida’s Cuban-American community, which has been crucial to his gubernatorial victories as well as his brother’s victory four year ago in the presidential race. Such party-strengthening maneuvers are precisely the object of the IRI’s Cuba initiatives; the programming is nothing more than a pro-Republican rip off, funneling substantial amounts of federal funds to organizations with little or no purpose beyond offering a platform for the rantings of a handful of obsessively anti-Communist (and not coincidentally hard-line Republican) Cuban-Americans.

[starroute]

35. And mix in a little Iran-Contra take 2

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=10692

British press baron Lord Northcliff said, "News is something that someone, somewhere wants to keep secret, everything else is advertising." If this is true, then U.S. government funding of Reporters Without Borders must be news, because the organization and its friends in Washington have gone to extraordinary lengths to cover it up. In spite of 14 months of stonewalling by the National Endowment for Democracy over a Freedom of Information Act request and a flat denial from RSF executive director Lucie Morillon, the NED has revealed that Reporters Without Borders received grants over at least three years from the International Republican Institute. . . .

Funding from the I.R.I. presents a major problem for RSF's credibility as a "press freedom" organization because the group manufactured propaganda against the popular democratic governments of Venezuela and Haiti at the same time that its patron, the I.R.I., was deeply involved in efforts to overthrow them. . . .

The man who links RSF to these activities is Otto Reich, who worked on the coups first as assistant secretary of state for Latin American affairs, and, after Nov. 2002, as a special envoy to Latin America on the National Security Council. Besides being a trustee of the government-funded Center for a Free Cuba, which gives RSF $50,000 a year, Reich has worked since the early 1980's with the I.R.I.'s senior vice president, Georges Fauriol, another member of the Center for a Free Cuba. But it is Reich's experience in propaganda that is especially relevant. In the 1980's he was caught up in investigations into the Reagan administration's illegal war on the Sandinistas. The comptroller general determined in 1987 that Reich's Office of Public Diplomacy had "engaged in prohibited covert propaganda activities." (Bogdanich and Nordberg, 2006). In early 2002, once George Bush had given him a recess appointment to the State Department, "Reich was soon tasked to orchestrate a massive international media defamation campaign against Chávez that has continued until this day"

[Canuckistanian]

29. "Fair Play for Cuba"?

Just wondering......

[bluesmail]

37. Could be a subsidary,

I'm pretty sure they left a few hundred paths to follow that just go back to the beginning.

[gateley]

2. Okay -

so the thought crossed my mind that this could be a set-up. Bushco's way of keeping Cuba and it's people in an unflattering light. :tinfoilhat:

I'm probably way off base, but this admin has caused me to knee-jerk automatically look for the REAL story behind their statements.

[calimary]

7. I realized that, too. You HAVE TO look between the lines and behind their backs

and in odd little corners and stuff. You HAVE TO suspect the worst. Because they are routinely up to something. I'd say it's the rule (a hard-and-fast one) as opposed to a carelessness exception or something. They never deal fairly, they're always being sneaky-ass about stuff, they're always distracting and distorting and deflecting blame - moving targets that won't let you hit them without hitting you back. They usually try to hit first. They're ALWAYS up to something. Count on it. There's always an ulterior motive, and something to be gained politically or financially. You always have to think deviously with these people. That's how you keep up with them.

And it's a damn shame. It shouldn't be this way. The people we trust to run our country for us should be worthy of that trust. These people now are anything but.

[enid602]

11. sacrificial lamb?

Maybe Bushco just wants to show how impartial his police state is by sacrificing a token republican before they snag 5 or 6 name Democrats.

[GoddessOfGuinness]

20. Welcome to the knee-jerker's club.

I find it suspect that after almost 8 years of absolutely NO accountability without pulling teeth to get it, they'd suddenly come up with this one little slug.

[Thepricebreaker]

3. Wow he came forward.. he was honest?

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

5. Caveat: Says Scott Stanzel.

[olddad56]

6. If he were honest, he wouldn't be in the Bush admin...

Nor would he have committed the crime.

[Igel]

24. Sort of. When he had to be. So it doesn't count.

"He said Sixto took that step after learning that his former employer, the Center for a Free Cuba, was prepared to bring legal action against him."

[calimary]

4. Yawn.

Gee, they coughed up another one. Gee I'm impressed. Wow - they gave up the ghost on The Wrong-Doer!!! Which means they've actually admitted they fucked up on something.

:sarcasm:

Meanwhile bush, cheney, rove, wolfowitz, rummy, feith, rice, negroponte, and the rest of 'em walk free.

[shaniqua6392]

9. Another one bites the dust.

Good grief.

[damntexdem]

10. That's not breaking news -- that's business as usual.

Well, OK, the RESIGNATION part is maybe only weekly news, but the improprieties not only occur constantly, they are a required element.

[Judi Lynn]

12. Bush aide resigns for alleged misuse of USAID grant money

Source: USA Today/AP

Bush aide resigns for alleged misuse of USAID grant money
Posted 6m ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House says an aide to President Bush has resigned because of the alleged misuse of grant money from U.S. Agency for International Development.

Presidential spokesman Scott Stanzel says the former aide, Felipe Sixto, had been a special assistant to the president for intergovernmental affairs. Stanzel said Sixto was promoted to that position on March 1 and that he came forward on March 20 to tell his superiors about the alleged wrongdoing.

Stanzel said it involved improprieties involving the use of grant money and Sixto's former employer, the Center for a Free Cuba. Stanzel says the matter has been turned over to the Justice Department.




Read more: http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2008-03-28-bush-aide_N.htm

[CBGLuthier]

13. Cubans again?

Someday a good historian must write about the effect on this country created by the whole mess we created in Cuba.

From Kennedy to Nixon and beyond, they seem to pop up all the time.

[Judi Lynn]

16. Throw in Bush #41's complete involvement in the Bay of Pigs, donating two of his own boats,

and his subsequent total interconnectedness with the U.S. Cubans throughout covert ops all over the world, hit squads, CIA, he was even the head of the CIA when a couple of them (whom George W. Bush pardoned as soon as he stole the White House) planted the bomb for Operation Condor which assassinated Chilean progressive diplomat, Orlando Letelier, and his American aide, Ronnie Moffit, and injured her husband, on the streets of Washington, D.C. in broad daylight. Bush #41 pardoned bomber/mass murderer/Cuban "exile" terrorist, Orlando Bosch, and _{George W.} has made it possible for his co-author of the slaughter of all 73 passengers and crew on the Cubana airliner (first in-air passenger jet bombing in history), Luis Posada Carriles to return to Miami to live freely and happily ever after.

The Elder _Bush also has entertained Felix Rodriguez, Cuban "exile" terrorist, CIA, Iran-Contra figure at the Vice-President's home when Reagan was President, and conducted an ongoing friendship with him, as well as ALL the fanatic right-wingers in Miami.

Jeb Bush has been involved in business with Cuban "exiles" in real estate, and one of his associates, Cuban "exile" Miguel Recarey pulled off the largest Medicare scam in U.S. history and fled the country.

_{George W. Bush} has flooded his own administration with as many Cuban "exiles" or their kids as he could manage.

You may recall Richard M. Nixon's best friend was Bebe Rebozo, a Cuban "exile" in Florida with whom he communed when he stayed at his vacation home in Key Biscayne, BEFORE he engaged the Cuban Watergate "plumbers" to break into Democratic Party headquarters.

Here's a photo taken from a local tv newscast in Florida of Bush giving a speech, with Cuban "exile" terrorist, Sixto Reynaldo “El Chino” Aquit sitting right behind him on stage.



Sixto Reinaldo Aquit Manrique (aka, El Chino Aquit), sharing
the platform with Bush in Miami, May 20, 2002.The UN Rapporteur
cited Aquit firing a 50 caliber machine gun at a Cypriot tanker
in Cuban waters in his 1994 annual report on human rights in Cuba.

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0504/S00224.htm

The Secret Service isn’t
mistaken so easily

BY JEAN-GUY ALLARD--Special for Granma International--

WHEN notorious terrorist Sixto Reynaldo “El Chino” Aquit was noticed sitting in the front row while George W. Bush gave a speech on Cuba on May 20, 2002 in Miami, some people commented that it must have been a Secret Service error.

At which point the respected investigator Saul Landau—just to clarify— asked an FBI officer if such a an error was possible, and the reply was a blunt “no,” it is unimaginable that an individual could have gotten that close to the President without formal authorization .

Certainly such a spectacle was surprising, even though Orlando Bosch also took the opportunity to appear in the vicinity of Bush and Luis Zúñiga, another well-documented terrorist, even embraced the man who pretends to champion the “war on terrorism”. Aquit appeared in a more ordinary role: just another member of the extremist Miami fauna.

A true inventory of Aquit’s criminal activities by Guatemalan investigative writer Percy Alvarado in 2004 explains how, among many other things, Aquit participated in an attack on the Cypriot ship Mikonos on April 2, 1993 with a 50-Caliber machine gun, only 7 miles from the port of Matanzas, a province to the east of Havana.

In early 1999, Aquit also actively participated in plotting a failed attempt against the president of Cuba at the investiture of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez.

More:
http://www.granmai.cubasi.cu/ingles/2006/marzo/lun13/12aquit.html

Here's the same terrorist, Sixto Reinaldo Aquit Manrique, wearing a yellow shirt, 5th from the left:


Crispina Aquit, Ángel Cuadra, Pedro J. Fuentes Cid, Michael S. Cohen, Sixto Reynaldo Aquit and the editors of Radio Prague Dita Asiedu, Freddy Valverde and Dagmar Keberlova.

[FSogol]

14. If misusing government funds is a crime, shouldn't the entire GOP resign?

:rofl:

[yellerpup]

15. Friend of the MySpace arms dealer? n/t

[Arctic Dave]

17. So he got zapped for stealing CIA front money. HAHAHAHAHA.

Don't you know, never steal money from the mob.

[Judi Lynn]

18. Right! USAID does the stuff publicly which the CIA used to do behind everyone's backs,

according to a statement I saw not long ago! Creepy idea!

The guy wasn't too cool about it: wasn't at his job all that long before he apparently started stuffing his pockets.

[MinM]

38. USAID - RFK

It's also interesting to note that USAID played a role in the RFK case. As documented in this video. :tinfoilhat:

[petersjo02]

21. It is late Friday afternoon, after all. n/t

[Virginia Dare]

22. Is it cocktail time already?..

I could set my watch by the Friday news dump.

[underpants]

23. Yyyep!

Unfortuneately I can't have any tonight-1/2 marathon tomorrow :-(

[FreeStateDemocrat]

25. Caught donating to a food pantry.

[Judi Lynn]

26. Miami Herald:White House aide resigns over alleged Cuba funds misuse

White House aide resigns over alleged Cuba funds misuse
Posted on Fri, Mar. 28, 2008Digg del.icio.us AIM reprint print email
By PABLO BACHELET
[e-mail]

~snip~
Calzón said ''an allegation'' of the misuse of funds emerged in mid-January and the Center decided to investigate.

''As weeks went by and some substance came up on the charges, a letter went to the inspector general of USAID,'' he said. ``We expect all the money to be returned.''

But he said the funds will be returned to the U.S. government, not the Center.

''So in effect, beyond the lawyers, the hassle, the investigation, the betrayal that some of us feel,'' Calzón said, ``it is also an economic thing that we're going to lose money.''

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/breaking_news/story/474317.html



Frank Calzon

Born 1947 in Cuba. Emigrated to the U.S. in 1960. Graduated from the University of Georgetown, where he was president of the Association of Cuban Students. Recruited by the CIA during his time as a university student.

From a very young age, Calzon became involved in Miami terrorist organizations of Cuban origin like Alpha-66 and Abdala. In Abdala Calzon held leadership positions and took part in subversive activities against Cuba.

During the 1970s, he co-founded, along with counterrevolutionaries Elena Mederos, Siro del Castillo and Humberto Medrano the Of Human Rights organization. Through this organization he maintained a systematic and intense defamatory campaign against Cuba, based fundamentally on supposed human rights violation and the state of counter-revolutionary prisoners.

During this period he became part of the board of directors of the Miami-based counterrevolutionary organization Committee of Intellectuals for the Freedom of Cuba. During these years, Calzon directed his attacks against groups that promoted a policy of understanding with the Cuban Revolution such as Areito magazine.

In 1981, Calzon founded the American National Foundation, along with Jorge Mas Canosa, Francisco Jose "Pepe" Hernandez and other emigrés of Cuban origin known for their terrorist activities against Cuba. In CANF, he was executive secretary, a position he used to promote laws against Cuba in the U.S. Congress, as well as to set up the well-known subversive radio station Radio Marti.

During this time he was also responsible for spearheading a number of aggressive press campaigns against the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) of Cuba.

Calzon left the CANF in 1987, after a power struggle with president Jorge Mas Canosa. Afterwards, he joined the New York based nongovernmental organization Freedom House. Founded in 1941 by conservative sectors, Freedom House is dedicated to launching campaigns, under the guise of human rights, against countries that don’t share their ideologies. Calzon has used this organization to launch defamatory campaigns against Cuba, to lobby against Cuba at the UN Human Rights Commission and promote subversive activities against Cuba.

With the fall of the socialist camp, Freedom House intensified the development of programs directed to subverting Cuba, fomenting the creation of counter revolutionary organizations and ringleaders in the national territory. Between 1995 and 1997 Calzon directed the Cuban Program of Freedom House, using the same methods employed against former socialist states in Eastern European. His long history with the CIA, beginning at a young age, was a perfect reference point for this post.

As part of the Cuban Program, Calzon has sent numerous collaborators to Cuba for several different illegal missions related to supplying and financing counterrevolutionary groups.

In August 1997, David Norman Dorn, a U.S. labour activist travelling in Cuba under a tourist visa, was detained in Cuba, for delivering money to counterrevolutionaries ringleaders under the orders of Frank Calzon.
(snip)

http://www.terrorfileonline.org/en/index.php/Frank_Calzon



Another Miami celebrity, Ricardo "El Mono" Morales
(El Mono meaning "Monkey")

C-4 specialist, former Batista secret police, Venezuela secret police, CIA

"...For three weeks in 1982, Morales testified under oath to "two attempted murders, gangland bombings,

political terrorism, narcotics dealing and a role in the destruction of an airliner in which 73 persons died."

[Botany]

27. Cubans, money, republicans, and the White House

I have already seen this movie.

On June 17, 1972, Frank Wills, a security guard at the Watergate Complex, noticed tape covering the locks on several doors in the complex. He called the police and within minutes, five men were arrested inside the Democratic National Committee's (DNC) office.<10> The five men were Virgilio González, Bernard Barker, James W. McCord, Jr., Eugenio Martínez and Frank Sturgis. The five were charged with attempted burglary and attempted interception of telephone and other communications. On September 15, a grand jury indicted them and two other men for conspiracy, burglary and violation of federal wiretapping laws. The two others were E. Howard Hunt, Jr. and Gordon Liddy.

From Wiki

[RainDog]

30. not to mention Clay Shaw, David Ferrie

and the oil men in TX who helped fund the Bay of Pigs - with that rotating cast of republicans like Porter Goss, E. Howard Hunt, the right wing Miami Cubans and the Mafia who owned the Casinos pre-Castro.

Cuba is no threat to the U.S. Jebbie is pandering for votes. We fund their bullshit.

[jgraz]

28. Wait -- he was fucking USAID grant money?

That's a new one, even for Repugs.

[Zynx]

33. Well, Republicans do love their money.

[Olney Blue]

34. The crimes never cease in this cabal.

[dipsydoodle]

36. improprieties ?

With goats, sheep or both ?