Bob Dole, Riggs Bank and the DC Madam?

[seemslikeadream]

http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSN0538238120070705



http://finance.myway.com/jsp/nw/nwdt_rt.jsp?section=news&news_id=dji-00094720040902&feed=dji&date=20040902&cat=INDUSTRY
Riggs Affair Sparks 'Suspicious Activity' Alert on Dole

Thursday September 2, 11:49 PM EDT

WASHINGTON -- The Riggs National Bank scandal has led to unexpected fallout, including "suspicious activity reports" on former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole and former Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci, Friday's Wall Street Journal reported.

As often as once a week, Mr. Dole's assistant walks around the corner from his Pennsylvania Avenue office in Washington to a branch of Riggs Bank, where she withdraws as much as $8,000 in cash. For walking-around money, Mr. Dole keeps a wad of $100 bills in the breast pocket of his shirt. "I probably use a credit card four or five times a year," Mr. Dole confesses. "I don't even have a wallet."

Mr. Dole's affinity for cash was of no concern to anyone until recently, when federal regulators pawing through the books of scandal-tarred Riggs spotted the large withdrawals and called them to the attention of management. In short order, the bank filed "suspicious activity reports" on Mr. Dole and another prominent Washington figure, Mr. Carlucci, questioning whether the two men might have violated federal laws against money laundering.

The reports are the latest strange fallout from the Riggs affair, which has reverberated through Washington in unexpected ways since the bank got into trouble with regulators this year for overlooking signs of suspicious activity by Saudi diplomats and foreign despots. The scandal has provoked a minor diplomatic crisis for the State and Treasury departments as Riggs, which has long had a lock on the diplomatic market in Washington, starts to shed all of its embassy accounts to get out from under a regulatory cloud and sell itself to PNC Financial Services Group Inc. (PNC).




http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=2308225

[RufusTFirefly]

1. Haha. That would be hilarious.

"Bob Dole is innocent," said the former Kansas Senator and pharmaceutical company pitchman. "Bob Dole was just doing a little research for Pfizer. That's what Bob Dole was doing."

[Laura PourMeADrink]

2. I see nothing about DC Madam - Was that just your guess????

[seemslikeadream]

3. yes

guessing :hi:

[aquart]

4. Based on what? Hope?

[seemslikeadream]

7. based on 8000 cash a week spending money

that's all

[malaise]

12. You need cash to care

:rofl: :rofl:

[Jane Austin]

5. What year is that from?

Sept 2, ????

[seemslikeadream]

6. 04

[Oilwellian]

8. Well, uh....

Dole IS a big fan of Viagra, right? :D

[KoKo]

9. Thanks for reposting that. I've always wondered what Dole was doing walking around with

wads of cash in his shirt pocket. Given Liddy and Bob's multiple face lifts and body works...one wonders what they both are into. Anyone who has seen Bob and liddy recently (she's my Senator and Bob was on a C-Span panel last week) know that they are very odd in the amount of work they seem to feel they need to be the "hot couple."

I have no doubt they will be connected to something very creepy or illegal some day....maybe not the madam but some other stuff that's yet to be revealed with Riggs and what they were up to with BAE and Saudi's, etc.

[Octafish]

10. The judge OK'd releasing the names on the DC Madame's client list.

Maybe Bob Dole is on it? Certainly might include Carlucci's, too, considering Dusty Foggo and all the CIA Sex & Cards Parties for defense contractor VIPs.

Sex and the C.I.A.

DEPARTMENT Washington Babylon
BY Ken Silverstein
PUBLISHED April 17, 2007

I recently received an advance copy of Seth Hettena's Feasting on the Spoils: The Life and Times of Randy “Duke” Cunningham, History's Most Corrupt Congressman, which will be published this July and which I highly recommend. In addition to being a terrific piece of political reporting, the book is filled with juicy details concerning the seamier side of the Cunningham affair, otherwise known as “Hookergate.”

I was particularly interested in stories Hettena unearthed about Kyle “Dusty” Foggo, whom former CIA director Porter Goss had named as executive director, the agency's number-three official. Foggo resigned last year not long after FBI agents raided his home and office. The Feds suspected that Foggo, who was later indicted, had funneled CIA contracts to his long-time friend Brent Wilkes, the defense contractor who is accused of bribing Cunningham with money and prostitutes.

Some of the more sensational stories in Hettena's book—and he has on-the-record sources—got me thinking. First, didn't Foggo's frequent indiscretions (for example, flashing his agency ID to jump the line at a strip club) raise red flags about his character? Second, wasn't Foggo's outlandish sexual behavior—like, say, publicly performing oral sex on a hooker (hired by Wilkes) at his own bachelor party—just the sort of thing that makes intelligence officials potentially vulnerable to blackmail by a hostile spy service? Third, might it be possible to cynically point to such revelations and use them as a hook for a blog item that combines sex and espionage?

SNIP...

So when does sex become a security problem? The CIA conducts background checks and administers periodic polygraph tests to try to ferret out anything that might make undercover officers vulnerable to blackmail. Until the mid-1990s, homosexuality was considered an immediate cause for dismissal. And “close and continuing contact with a foreign national,” a euphemism for a sexual relationship, was deemed to be another major vulnerability. Any such relationship had to be reported and failure to do so could also lead to dismissal. In fact, during the Cold War, the KGB (and allied services, including the East German Stasi under Markus Wolf, and Cuban intelligence) frequently sought to entrap CIA officers. The KGB believed that Americans were sex-obsessed materialists, and that U.S. spies could easily be lured with the prospect of an easy lay. CIA officers in Russia were strongly warned about “swallows,” the term for the beautiful women the KGB deployed to try to seduce Americans, which was a constant danger at Moscow station. (One former CIA official told me that he and his friends joked that they longed to be given the job of “sexual entrapment training officer.”)

CONTINUED...

http://www.harpers.org/archive/2007/04/sb-sex-and-the-cia

Wonder if Jeff Gannon moonlighted there, too?

[seemslikeadream]

11. Washington Babylon this is your final day, this is your final call

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjRvAq6K654

Si la loo babylon come 'round
You better know you better understand
'Fact you know you better hear what they say
Babylon this is your final day
Babylon this is your final call
Read the writin' it's on the wall
Said United we stand
And together we fall
And if I know that
You're not 'gon catch me in a rat pack
We not go fallin' on your death trap
No way....

Whoooooa oh oh oh oh whoa oh who oh oh
Whooooooa oh oh oh
Whoa oh oh o oh

The richest man in Babylon



http://www.vanityfair.com/features/general/articles/060705fege01

Washington Babylon

California Republican congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham traded military contracts for $2.4 million in antiques, cash, and other booty. He is now in jail, but his case exposed a world of bribery, booze, and broads that reaches into the Pentagon, the C.I.A., and Congress. Washington is wondering: Who's next?
By JUDY BACHRACH

he corruption of Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham, a powerful California Republican, was, as the U.S. Attorney's Office maintains, historically "unparalleled"—an astonishing statement coming in the wake of the Abramoff scandal. A former Vietnam naval pilot who was awarded two Silver Stars and a Purple Heart, Cunningham, now 64, appropriated John Wayne's nickname and first ran for the House with the slogan "A congressman we can be proud of." Indeed, from the moment he arrived in Washington, in 1991, he made it his business to seem larger than life, telling people that his wartime heroics had inspired episodes in the movie Top Gun. His military service and expertise eventually earned him a place on the defense-appropriations subcommittee, with vast sway over the military budget, as well as on the intelligence committee, which oversees the C.I.A. and other spy agencies. Ever ready to defend the integrity of the armed forces, as he saw it, Duke excoriated Democrats who wanted to cut the defense budget, calling them the same people "who would put homos in the military."

But in November, Cunningham's heroic image came crashing down, and his swagger evaporated when he pleaded guilty to accepting $2.4 million in bribes from military contractors in exchange for pressuring the Pentagon to buy their products and services. The government believes he was bribed chiefly by two men, identified in court documents as "co-conspirator No. 1" and "co-conspirator No. 2," now known to be Brent Wilkes and his protégé Mitchell Wade. (Wilkes has vigorously denied any wrongdoing and has not been charged with any crimes in this case.) The products they hawked—computer software to scan and convert military maps, drawings, and documents into digital format—lacked glamour, perhaps, but they made the two entrepreneurs and Cunningham wealthy, arrogant, and even reckless, courtesy of a compliant Pentagon. Wilkes's two dozen or so firms, in California and Virginia, raked in $100 million over the last decade, while Wade's Washington-based MZM Inc. has gotten $150 million since 2002.

According to prosecutors, Wilkes and Wade generously remunerated Duke Cunningham for steering government business their way. Wilkes, prosecutors allege, gave Cunningham more than $600,000 in bribes, including two checks totaling $100,000 and $525,000 to pay off a mortgage. (Wilkes, through his attorney, denies these allegations.) In February, Wade pleaded guilty to bribing Cunningham with over $1 million—but he operated with more panache, indulging Cunningham's taste for outsize antiques. The trove he offered included Persian and Indian rugs, sleek Louis-Philippe and Restoration commodes, a $24,000 Victorian china hutch, leaded-glass cabinets, and silver candlesticks worth $5,600. "Duke liked his antiques big and he liked them expensive," explains a Maryland antiques dealer, who despaired of his taste. (Duke got other gifts as well: a secondhand Rolls-Royce and the use of Wade's 42-foot boat, renamed the Duke-Stir.)

The truth is no one knows if the $2.4 million in bribes Cunningham has admitted taking in his guilty plea is the final total. Duke's been at it for some time. In fact, right up to the end, the Maryland antiques dealer tells me, Cunningham was trying to get her to put one of his valuable 19th-century armoires in storage, "anywhere, he didn't care where," as long as it was far from the government's prying eyes. "Very immature, thinking the rules of the game didn't apply to him," the dealer says. But why should they? For years he had been running the game. (Cunningham's attorney, K. Lee Blalack II, refuses to comment on the substance of the case.)

Washington is unraveling.
"What these revelations provide is a window into Babylon or the last stages of Rome," explains a source with knowledge of the multiple ongoing investigations.



The richest man in babylon

There is no quidance in your kingdom
Your wicked walk in Babylon
There is no wisdom to your freedom
The richest man in babylon

Your beggars sleep outside your doorway
Your prophets leave to wonder on
You fall asleep at night with worry
The saddest man in Babylon

The wicked stench of exploitation
Hangs in the air and lingers on
Beneath the praise and admiration
The weakest man in Babylon

There is no hope left in your kingdom
Your servants have burned all their songs
Nobody here remembers freedom
The richest man in Babylon

Si la lou babylon go 'dain
Babylon gon' be rich again
But to we don' sick again
But no we no weak again
Babyloooon on on on on
(Rasta scat)
Sal la lou ca uba whoa
Si la douba douba do wa bay
??
Si la loo babylon come 'round
You better know you better understand
'Fact you know you better hear what they say
Babylon this is your final day
Babylon this is your final call
Read the writin' it's on the wall
Said United we stand
And together we fall
And if I know that
You're not 'gon catch me in a rat pack
We not go fallin' on your death trap
No way...

Whoooooa oh oh oh oh whoa oh who oh oh
Whooooooa oh oh oh
Whoa oh oh o oh

Thievery Corporation

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/12/10/114820/90

The richest men in Babylon


Brent Wilkes & Mitchell Wade - Bagmen in the Successful Plot to Take Over the United States and Enrich GOP Officeholders

The Duke Cunningham scandal goes much deeper than just the $2.4 million in bribes being reported by the media. There is a lot the media is not telling you.

Ever wonder why the Republicans have SO much money in every national election?

And what did the Dukester do to get his Rolls-Royce, anyway? Whose Lear Jet was he flying around in?

* Sherlock Google's diary :: ::
*

If you were a totally crooked neo-con former CIA financier Republican who hangs with the corrupt Delay-Abramoff crowd, what would be the most unethical, diabolical way to funnel SO much money to the Republican Party and neo-con schemes that you could take back the government from the Democrats?

Easy!

With your corrupt Republican buddies, form a slew of your own brand-new Defense Companies, submit bids on things the Pentagon never even asked for to the Delay/Cunningham network and Bingo!--those contributions to the GOP and K Street will flow in like never before. You can then even give to Presidential candidates like George W. Neo-Con.

Then you and your criminal gang take over the United States of America with your ill-gotten gains. Once in power, you can use your connections to weasel your way iuto intelligence agency contracts so you can help said Neo-Cons cook up a case for the Iraq War by a phony analysis of some aluminum tubes. The War on Terra is on!

Even more money for you and the GOP then.

It's a simple plan--one even the average American can understand.

Here's how Wilkes and Wade, with the help of the Culture of Corruption, made all of themselves wealthy with taxpayer money.


Detail from an engraving of Georges Rochegrosse's
"The Death of Babylon," ca. 1901.

[malaise]

13. LOL

:D