The Plot to Link the Kerry/Edwards 2004 Presidential Campaign to Al Qaeda

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Tue May-15-07 12:17 AM
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The Plot to Link the Kerry/Edwards 2004 Presidential Campaign to Al Qaeda

Many but not enough Americans are aware of the numerous election fraud activities and dirty tricks that contributed to George W. Bush’s “victory” in the 2004 Presidential election, especially in Ohio, whose 118 thousand vote margin for the Bush/Cheney ticket provided the electoral votes that made the crucial difference in that election.

Not enough Americans are aware that today’s electronic voting machines, owned and operated by wealthy individuals with strong ties to the Republican Party, record millions of votes in our presidential elections using secret computer programs that cannot be verified for accuracy by anyone; that exit polls nationally and in Ohio clearly showed John Kerry as the victor on Election Day 2004, despite a Bush “victory” in the official vote count; that a Florida computer programmer testified before Congress that he wrote a vote switching program at the request of a Republican operative (Tom Feeney) and that he believes that a similar program was used to switch votes in the 2004 presidential election; that the man charged with investigating those allegations was mysteriously found dead in a Georgia hotel room as his investigation was nearing completion; and that a myriad of voter complaints surfaced on Election Day 2004 claiming that they had tried to vote for John Kerry on an electronic voting machine, but that their votes were switched to George Bush.

Not enough Americans are aware that over 160 thousand voters were purged for no apparent legal reason in heavily democratic Cuyahoga (Ohio) County alone; that much evidence points to targeted purging of Democratic voters in other Ohio counties as well, where break-ins at Democratic headquarters resulted in the stealing of computers that contained Democratic voter lists; and that voter registration in much of Ohio in 2004 was handled electronically by the same voting machine company (Diebold) that counts so many of our votes using secret and unaccountable computer programs.

Not enough Americans are aware that according to the electronic machines that counted our votes in 2004, the apparent voter turnout in heavily Democratic Cleveland was woefully and inexplicably low, despite visual evidence of huge lines all over the city; that an attempted official recount in Cuyahoga County (which contains Cleveland) was fraudulent and resulted in the indictment and conviction of two election workers; that an unofficial and partial recount of the 2004 Cuyahoga County vote found numerous discrepancies in favor of George Bush; that heavily Republican Warren County election officials locked reporters out of the building where they counted the votes after poll closing, using a fake terrorist alert as an excuse for doing so; and that it was later found that Karl Rove himself was apparently granted access to the Ohio vote counting machinery on Election Day.

Not enough Americans are aware that several thousand net votes were lost to John Kerry on Election Day because of a withholding of electronic voting machines in Columbus County (Ohio); that John Conyers’ House Judiciary Committee Report documented numerous Republican dirty trick in Ohio on Election Day, including telling minority voters that they would be arrested if they tried to vote, or that they were supposed to vote on Wednesday; and that many federal prosecutors were fired by the Bush administration for refusing to prosecute phony claims of “voter fraud” against Democratic voters.

This post discusses one more filthy dirty trick attempted against the Kerry/Edwards campaign, which I was totally unaware of until I recently read “America at Night – The True Story of Two Rogue CIA Operatives, Homeland Security Failures, Dirty Money, and a plot to Steal the 2004 U.S. Presidential Election”. The book was written by Larry J. Kolb, a former CIA agent. Please excuse the rather long introduction, but I feel that the myriad of 2004 election stealing activities are closely related to each other and should be considered together (though the above introduction is NOT by any means the whole story of the 2004 election theft) in order to be viewed in the appropriate context.

The main character – Richard Hirschfeld

The man at the center of the plot was Richard Hirschfeld, a con man and Republican operative with a list of crimes a mile long. To give you an idea of Hirschfeld’s modus operandi, here are just a few examples:

Though Hirschfeld testified before Congress of a plot by former Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos to invade the Philippines to reinsert himself as dictator, Kolb presents evidence in his book that Hirschfeld himself was involved in the plot and bilked Marcos out of millions of dollars before turning on him.

Hirschfeld made hundreds of telephone calls to Congresspersons, while impersonating and claiming to be Mohammed Ali, to try to convince Congress to pass a special law that would have been worth millions to Hirschfeld; he served time in prison for securities and tax fraud; his business partner, Robert Chastain, died under mysterious circumstances, shortly after the suicide clause in his insurance policy lapsed, and following which Hirschfeld collected $5 million from that life insurance policy.

But enough about Hirschfeld’s elaborate crimes, dozens which are detailed in Kolb’s book. The other salient fact of Hirschfeld’s background was his numerous ties to high levels of the Republican Party, which, Kolb speculates, explains how Hirschfeld was able to commit so many elaborate crimes during his life while spending so little time in prison. This article details some of those Republican ties, including the following: George H.W. Bush sent him on a mission (verified by Kolb, who also went on that mission in his official CIA capacity) to the Middle East in 1985 to bargain for the release of American hostages in Lebanon; Hirschfeld retained as lawyers C. Boyden Gray, former White House Counsel to Bush Sr. (who approached Alberto Gonzalez with a clemency request for Hirschfeld), and Jerrris Leonard, former U.S. Attorney in the Nixon Administration; and the article speaks of connections to Rep. Henry Hyde, current Republican candidate for President Jim Gilmore, and former Republican presidential candidate Pat Robertson. And Kolb documents much more in his book.

The plot to connect the Kerry/Edwards campaign with al Qaeda

The plot to connect the Kerry/Edwards campaign to al Qaeda centered around a wealthy businessman of Turkish origin by the name of Engin Yesil. Yesil owned a company called Radiant Telecom, which specialized in prepaid calling cards and state-of-the-art money transfer technologies. Both of these functions, though generally used for legitimate purposes, were also ideal for the operations of al Qaeda, since they enabled them to place anonymous phone calls and conduct anonymous money transfers. In fact, Mohammed Atta’s suicide cells had used Radiant calling cards on numerous occasions prior to the September 11th attacks against the U.S. Consequently, Yesil was under investigation by the CIA and other federal agencies, although he did not know that.

Richard Hirschfeld had for several years insinuated himself into Yesil’s businesses, and in March 2004 he engineered a merger involving Yesil’s successor company to Radiant Telecom, which would make Robert Farmer, the Kerry campaign’s treasurer, chairman of the new company’s board of directors.

When Larry Kolb found out about that he connected the dots and came to the conclusion that Hirschfeld’s purpose behind the merger was to cause a major scandal for the Kerry campaign shortly prior to the 2004 election. Kolb then contacted the Kerry campaign through a friend to tell them of his strong suspicions. The Kerry campaign at first was very skeptical of the idea, but Kolb persisted, and to make a long story short, the Kerry campaign did some of their own investigations and came to the conclusion that Kolb was indeed correct. Subsequently the merger was cancelled before it was scheduled to take place, and the scandal was averted. Much of Kolb’s information on this train of events came from Yesil himself. As an interesting aside, Yesil also found out that Hirschfeld had recently taken out a $20 million insurance policy on his (Yesil’s) life.

The death of Richard Hirschfeld

Hirschfeld’s luck finally ran out, or else the George W. Bush administration finally came to the conclusion that his usefulness to them had run its course. On October 1, 2004, shortly before the 2004 election, he was arrested by the FBI for one of his numerous elaborate crimes, and he was sent to federal prison in Miami.

Figuring out that the Bush administration now considered him expendable, Hirschfeld attempted to blackmail them. Kolb received that information through a high placed friend of his, Vince Messina. Messina did not know for sure what the substance of the blackmail was, but he guessed that it had something to do with either Iraq or the 2004 election.

On January 10th, 2005, shortly before George Bush began his second term as president, Hirschfeld was found dead in his cell. The cause of death was said to be suicide by hanging. Kolb heard many rumors of foul play, but nothing was ever proven.

A word about the 2008 elections

It is clear that the Republican Party of the 21st Century has been involved in myriads of plots to steal elections at the highest levels. The 2000 election was clearly stolen, and it is highly probable that John Kerry would be President today if not for the myriad instances of election fraud perpetrated upon his campaign and upon the American people. There is also good evidence to suggest, based upon more exit poll discrepancies, that the Republican Party perpetrated several million votes worth of election fraud in the 2006 Congressional elections, although in that case the fraud succeeded only in reducing themagnitude of the Democratic victory, not in preventing the Democrats from taking over Congress.

The bottom line is that the highest levels of the Republican Party are ruthless in their quest for power, and there appears to be little or nothing they would stop at to retain their power. Put that together with the fact that our votes are counted by electronic machines using secret computer programs, and any sensible person would conclude that our election system – and consequently our democracy – are in very bad shape indeed.

One could argue that the enactment of laws that require voter verified paper trails to accompany electronic voting is an improvement over electronic voting with no paper trail requirement. Perhaps it is, but probably NOT if it provides a false sense of security. There are just too many problems with electronic voting, even with paper trails – among them the fact that voters often don’t verify their paper trails even if allowed to do so (so that the paper trail itself may be fraudulent) and the fact that even when paper trails exist they often or usually are not utilized to verify the accuracy of the electronic vote (as happened in Ohio in 2004). Until a way is devised to adequately address these very serious problems, our voting system will remain highly susceptible to fraud and stolen elections.

The bottom line is that we cannot trust our voting system to the assurances of private companies or anyone else that our votes are counted accurately. There must be a fail safe mechanism available for the people of the United States to verify that our votes are counted accurately and that our elections are fair.