Thursday, March 26, 2009
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Joseph Cannon
Alex: I read Joseph Cannon's column on the SLA, and it repeats some of the work done by Mae Brussell years ago. What do you think of Cannon? - Gina
Not much. Less that that. The column you mention only confirms a few points raised by Mae, and he insults her memory in the process by assuming that he is capable of judging her, and he isn't. Cannon's comments weren't peer review - he is not her peer.
Anyone who claims that 9/11 forensic research detracts from understanding the CIA & drugs is out to lunch and will never return. Cannon, Hopsicker's tag team partner, is engaging in opinion formation and can't possibly believe his own argument. It's intended to manipulate, reinforce Hopsicker's spin, reinforce the emphasis on bin Laden.
What do drugs have to do with 9/11?
Didn't he write the column claiming that Barbara Bush is the illegitimate daughter of Aleister Crowley?
And he calls Mae Brussell "loopy." ...
And Mr. Cannon's absolute certainty that the World Trade Center was not taken down by controlled demolition is also positively hopsickerian. Cannon presents himself as an informed columnist, fancies himself a gatekeeper, but what he doesn't know hurts him.
- AC
Not much. Less that that. The column you mention only confirms a few points raised by Mae, and he insults her memory in the process by assuming that he is capable of judging her, and he isn't. Cannon's comments weren't peer review - he is not her peer. Anyone who claims that 9/11 forensic research detracts from understanding the CIA & drugs is out to lunch and will never return. Cannon, Hopsicker's tag team partner, is engaging in opinion formation and can't possibly believe his own argument. It's intended to manipulate, reinforce Hopsicker's spin, reinforce the emphasis on bin Laden.
What do drugs have to do with 9/11?
Didn't he write the column claiming that Barbara Bush is the illegitimate daughter of Aleister Crowley?
And he calls Mae Brussell "loopy." ...
And Mr. Cannon's absolute certainty that the World Trade Center was not taken down by controlled demolition is also positively hopsickerian. Cannon presents himself as an informed columnist, fancies himself a gatekeeper, but what he doesn't know hurts him.
- AC
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Dark Knight Director's Brother Arrested for Murder (Revised and Expanded)
Details of the murder conspiracy and official cover-up. Dark Knight director Christopher Nolan's brother Matthew is accused not only of murder, but bank fraud, as well. The father of Michelle Williams is also wanted for investment fraud. What did Heath Ledger know?
Flight 3407: Kreindler & Kreindler Cons Buffalo with a Psyop/Cover Story
Edited by Alex ConstantineIn two parts:
1) "Top aviation law firm digs into the case," WIVB-TV News4News, Buffalo, NY - Daniel Rose, a former Navy pilot in Iraq and a partner at Kreindler and Kreindler, is going to "investigate" the disaster. Mr. Rose is limiting his probe to "pilot error," of course. The crash only looks like sabotage and assassination of activists, witnesses and co-conspirators that the Bush administration wanted out of the way. But who in that Republican circle, with its fine, immutable "conservative principles," would stoop to political assassination?
2) "Kreindler & Kreindler Law Firm is a Cynical CIA Psyop Tool" - I originally posted this data in 2006. My motto: "The cover-up proves the crime." K&K is on intimate terms with the CIA, and has been central to covering up a score of covert ops/mass murders. K&K was also, as documented, instrumental in selling the American public on the Iraq War with a psychological operation falsely linking Saddam Hussein to 9/11 and the A-Bomb. Fox News: " ... Kreindler & Kreindler, a Park Ave. law firm that has been working overtime to establish a money trail leading from Saddam Inc.’s amassed loot to al-Qaeda’s coffers. ... " Yes, it's that kind of law firm ... Jim Kreindler on 9/11: "Immediately I suspected a terrorist attack and I found myself thinking about another terrorist event that dominated the attention of our law firm since 1988 – the bombing of Pan Am 103 by operatives of the Libyan government. ... " Sure-sure ...
•••
1) Top aviation law firm digs into the case
23 Mar 2009
Posted by Emma Orn
BUFFALO, N.Y. (WIVB) - We're still waiting for conclusive answers about what caused the horrific crash of Flight 3407 in Clarence Center. One of the nation's top aviation law firms is digging into the case.
Daniel Rose, a former Navy pilot [carrier-based attack pilot on board the U.S.S. Independence, where he participated in Desert Shield] and a partner with Kreindler and Kreindler recently sat down with Investigative Reporter Luke Moretti. He said the firm's own investigation is focusing on the flight crew's experience and training.
"Certainly in a major airline you would never see the pairing of experience that we see here. You would have easily, either one, the pilot or co-pilot having thousands of hours in that particular plane before they were introduced to a co-pilot or a pilot that had much lesser time," Aviation Attorney Daniel Rose said.
One key piece of evidence is the cockpit voice recorder. Investigative reporter Luke Moretti will have more on that coming up Monday night on News 4 at 11.
http://www.wivb.com/dpp/news/Moretti_investigates_Flight_3407_crash_20090323
•••
Kreindler & Kreindler Law Firm is a Cynical CIA Psyop Tool
ENTER FOX NEWS (CIA) BIAS - http://www.newsmax.com/archives
/articles/2003/5/6/210024.shtml
One of Fawcett’s clients is Kreindler & Kreindler, a Park Ave. law firm that has been working overtime to establish a money trail leading from Saddam Inc.’s amassed loot to al-Qaeda’s coffers. ... “We think Saddam’s laundered money was used in part to provide financial support to al-Qaeda, and we’re looking at billions of dollars hidden in financial institutions and companies,” says attorney James Kreindler.
------------------
Mark Labaton, KK
KK Logic
http://www.law.harvard.edu/alumni/
bulletin/backissues/fall97/classnotes/
main.html
... Kreindler confidently countered the prevailing wisdom about the crash of TWA 800.... "TWA 800 exploded at 13,700 feet in calm weather. It would have taken a huge bomb to bring that plane down, and the larger the bomb, the more difficult it is to smuggle onto a plane. So we felt from the very beginning that we were looking at mechanical or structural failure."
[Excuse my skepticism ...]
http://old.krg.org/docs/articles/
rosett-wsj-oil-for-terror-apr04.asp
In Oil-for-Food, "Every contract tells a story," says John Fawcett, a financial investigator with the New York law firm of Kreindler & Kreindler LLP, which has sued the financial sponsors of Sept. 11 on behalf of the victims and their families. In an interview, Mr. Fawcett and his colleague, Christine Negroni, run down the lists of Oil-for-Food authorized oil buyers and
relief suppliers, pointing out likely terrorist connections. One authorized oil buyer, they note, was a remnant of the defunct global criminal bank, BCCI.
Another was close to the Taliban while Osama bin Laden was on the rise in Afghanistan; a third was linked to a bank in the Bahamas involved in al Qaeda's financial network; a fourth had a close connection to one of
Saddam's would-be nuclear-bomb makers.
------------------
Mark Labaton
Mark Labaton, is a partner at the firm Kreindler & Kreindler, LLP, with offices in New York and LA. The firm handles cases including securities and consumer class actions, and FCA whistleblower, antitrust, and
consumer cases.
His resume includes 7 years as an Assistant US Attorney for the Central District of California, where he prosecuted white-collar fraud cases, including whistleblower actions...
------------
K & K AND BCCI
http://www.kreindler.com/biographies/partners/mark_labaton.html
As an Assistant United States Attorney, Mark investigated and brought numerous high-profile cases in Los Angeles, Orange, and Ventura Counties to successful conclusions. These included white-collar fraud cases against prominent banking presidents andother executives of well-known financial institutions — such as the infamous Bank of Credit and Commerce
International and other highly-publicized bank failures — as well as whistle blower cases involving healthcare, defense contracting, minority and women
contracting, and other governmental programs....
PUNCHLINE A
Mark received awards and commendations from United States Attorney General Janet Reno, several United States Attorneys, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation as well the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Office of the Inspector General, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Immigration and Naturalization Service ....
... funded with a Ford Foundation grant ...
-------------
Kreindler & Kreindler Humor
http://home1.gte.net/~vze43v8m/alqaeda,anthraxb.html
... As in the game Monopoly, sometimes practical alliances can be formed for tactical purposes against a common enemy. A detailed argument relating to the connections between Iraq and Al Qaeda can be found online in the trillion dollar complaint against Iraq filed by the law firm Kreindler & Kreindler in connection with 9/11....
-----
http://www.overlawyered.com/2004/
09/update_blame_it_on_riyadh.html
And in the New York Observer, Nina Burleigh in February profiled attorney Brian Alexander of the prominent plaintiff's air-crash firm of Kreindler &
Kreindler, who had "already filed a suit -- on behalf of the families of more than 1,000 9/11 families against a list of foreign entities hundreds of pages
long." ("Air Disasters, Legal Fees And Justice for the Victims", New York Observer, Feb. 23).
http://www.septembereleventh.org/
newsarchive/2004-02-19-longisland.php
This may be uncharted waters, but I was thrown in a pool on Sept. 11, 2001, and had to learn to swim," says 9/11 widow Monica Gabrielle, of West Haven, Conn. "No one has been fired. No one has been demoted. The same people who are guarding us today on an elevated security alert are the same people who were working that day." She describes her late husband, Richard
Gabrielle, an insurance broker who lay trapped underneath rubble as the South Tower collapsed: "He was a gentle man, and he was alive, trying to get out of that building that day. The dead. The dying. The smoke. The terror. No one should have suffered like that. I want accountability. I need answers."
Gabrielle is represented by Kreindler & Kreindler, the Manhattan firm that won $2 million in 1995 for 13 American Airlines passengers who had experienced 28 seconds of severe turbulence. Gabrielle is one of many
plaintiffs represented by the firm who have joined others in filing suit against the airlines and security firms involved in 9/11. Also named are Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda, certain governments, and parties accused of masterminding the attacks.
As Gabrielle's attorney, Brian Alexander, sees it, the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund is the byproduct of powerful airline lobbying. "The legislation[that created the fund] was designed to protect the airlines first and foremost—and it was airline lobbyists who pushed it," Alexander says. "The Victim Compensation Fund for the families was an afterthought." ??Skeptical of the Mariani suit's chances, Alexander says, "At the end of the day there are legal defenses that the government can take, they get to be stupid, they can be as negligent as all get-out, and they will still win, especially when you're talking about intelligence."
But Mariani's goal is not victory in court, but a closer pass at the truth.
-------------
Kreiger & Kreiger Does 'Em All
http://www.kreindler.com/kreindler_
news/news_current/2006-08-Comair-
Flight5191.htm
Founded in 1950, Kreindler & Kreindler LLP (www.kreindler.com) is nationally recognized as the first and most prominent aviation law firm in the nation. With offices in New York and Los Angeles, the firm has been the leading plaintiff legal counsel on hundreds of aviation cases, including major ones such as the September 11 terrorist attacks, Pan Am\Lockerbie Flight 103, Korean Airlines Flight 007, TWA Flight 800 and American Airlines Flight 587, and many cases of small private and commercial crashes. The
leading legal textbook in the aviation field, "Aviation Accident Law," was authored by members of the firm.
----------------
James P. Kreindler & Kings County (Brooklyn) District Attorneys' Office
http://www.aneurysm-rupture.org/personnel
James P. Kreindler
James P. Kreindler joined Kreindler & Kreindler in 1983 and became a partner in 1987. He is a magna cum laude graduate of Dartmouth College, 1977. He received his J.D. degree from Columbia University in 1980,
where he was a Harlan Fiske Stone scholar. He began his career as an Assistant District Attorney in the Kings County (Brooklyn) District Attorneys' Office.
------------------
PUNCHLINE B
Kings County (Brooklyn) District Attorneys' Office & Mafia
http://www.nthposition.com/americanmafia.php
American Mafia is not only a body count of the corrupt. Reppetto rewards the reader with surprising facts concerning the FBI's origin, J Edgar Hoover's
history of slouching away from organized crime, the infiltration of the movie industry by the mob, the criminal corruption in the political machine that
produced President Truman and, for contrast, the striking figure of Henry Morgenthau, Jr, using among other things, Treasury to fight crime. Reppetto offers an example of political arithmetic. If Costello controlled New York County (+1), and Adonis controlled Kings County (+1), what did that add up to in controlling Bronx boss Ed Flynn who had to answer to Governor Lehman and President Roosevelt should New York County and Kings County fall out of their baskets in configuring the Democrat control of New York State? If your answer is 2, leave the room and while out there reflect on the fact that, according to Reppetto, when Flynn was Bronx County sheriff Dutch Schultz was issued a deputy sheriff's badge....
As racketeering seeped through New York's labor unions, the clothing, trucking, and other industries, Tammany leader Jimmy Hines, by controlling judges and prosecutors like prostitutes, protects Dutch Schultz and Luciano. Joe Adonis in Brooklyn had similar power over the Kings County District Attorney.
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Last Post till June
Goodbye until June. Americans have the fascism they so richly deserve, and when it eats them, who's conditioned to care? No reason to post, given the immutable, willful ignorance of the American people. I can't stand the spectacle of stupidity any longer, so I'm taking a couple months off from all political information. Gwine to be a self-interested hedonist for awhile, like the idiots around me, apolitical and spinning a cocoon of apathy to understand what that feels like. BTW, this planet is poisoned and won't support human life much longer. Better do something about it. I'm going to go listen to some belly-button pop music now.
Squawk!,
- Chicken Little
A Pregnant Pause
All rights reserved
- Alex Constantine
Squawk!,
- Chicken Little
A Pregnant Pause
All rights reserved
- Alex Constantine
Video: Protest of Lockheed Martin at the Pentagon
March on the Pentagon's Industrial Complex
March 22, 2009
Protest demands that US ends military occupations and universities divest in Lockheed Martin
http://therealnews.com/t/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=3453
March 22, 2009
Protest demands that US ends military occupations and universities divest in Lockheed Martin
http://therealnews.com/t/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=3453
Cheney Assassination Unit Claim Boosts Truth Commission Prospects
www.examiner.com
March 19, 2009
Prospects for the U.S. Congress launching inquiries into abuses by the Bush-Cheney administration have grown with a claim that Vice President Dick Cheney ran an assassination unit out of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC). Speaking at a conference at the University of Minnesota on March 10, respected journalist Seymour Hersh said that the JSOC unit, comprising special military forces personnel, reported directly to Cheney and operated without any kind of Congressional oversight. According to Hersh, even the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Secretary of Defense were out of the loop on JSOC operations. In comments that set Washington abuzz, Hersh concluded:
"It’s an executive assassination ring essentially, and it’s been going on and on and on.”
Hersh’s claims led to Congressman Dennis Kucinich on March 13 asking the Chair of a key House Committee to launch an investigation. Hersh's claims are also likely to boost efforts by Senator Patrick Leahy to create a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to investigate wrongdoing during the Bush-Cheney administration.
In 1976, President Ford issued Executive Order 11905 to clarify intelligence activities. Among the "Restrictions on Intelligence Activities," contained in the EO was a section entitled "Prohibition on Assassination." Section 5(b) states: "No employee of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, political assassination." Curiously, at the time Ford issued his EO, Dick Cheney was his Chief of Staff. In 1981, President Reagan reiterated the proscription against political assassination with Executive Order 12333. No legislative act or executive order has since been issued to override Reagan’s EO 12333 which remains in effect. ...
CONTINUED
March 19, 2009
Prospects for the U.S. Congress launching inquiries into abuses by the Bush-Cheney administration have grown with a claim that Vice President Dick Cheney ran an assassination unit out of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC). Speaking at a conference at the University of Minnesota on March 10, respected journalist Seymour Hersh said that the JSOC unit, comprising special military forces personnel, reported directly to Cheney and operated without any kind of Congressional oversight. According to Hersh, even the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Secretary of Defense were out of the loop on JSOC operations. In comments that set Washington abuzz, Hersh concluded:
"It’s an executive assassination ring essentially, and it’s been going on and on and on.”
Hersh’s claims led to Congressman Dennis Kucinich on March 13 asking the Chair of a key House Committee to launch an investigation. Hersh's claims are also likely to boost efforts by Senator Patrick Leahy to create a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to investigate wrongdoing during the Bush-Cheney administration.
In 1976, President Ford issued Executive Order 11905 to clarify intelligence activities. Among the "Restrictions on Intelligence Activities," contained in the EO was a section entitled "Prohibition on Assassination." Section 5(b) states: "No employee of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, political assassination." Curiously, at the time Ford issued his EO, Dick Cheney was his Chief of Staff. In 1981, President Reagan reiterated the proscription against political assassination with Executive Order 12333. No legislative act or executive order has since been issued to override Reagan’s EO 12333 which remains in effect. ...
CONTINUED
Hellman & Friedman Group Set to Buy Barclays’ iShares, Dow Says
Also see: The Lexington Comair Crash, parts 13 and 18 for Hellman & Friedman/CIA/organized crime/Hunt family connections
By Alistair Holloway
Bloomberg
March 22, 2009
Hellman & Friedman LLC is leading a group of private-equity companies that is set to buy Barclays Plc’s iShares business, Dow Jones reported, citing an unidentified person familiar with the situation.
The deal, if completed, would value the unit at about $5 billion, the report said.
Barclays’ spokeswoman Nicola Hankey declined to comment when contacted by Bloomberg News today.
Barclays said March 16 it was in talks to sell the exchange-traded funds unit to bolster capital without turning over a stake to the U.K. government. Rivals Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc and Lloyds Banking Group Plc boosted capital through a state asset-insurance plan that allowed increased state ownership of the companies.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601102&sid=afYDFiZGeZd4&refer=uk
By Alistair Holloway
Bloomberg
March 22, 2009
Hellman & Friedman LLC is leading a group of private-equity companies that is set to buy Barclays Plc’s iShares business, Dow Jones reported, citing an unidentified person familiar with the situation.
The deal, if completed, would value the unit at about $5 billion, the report said.
Barclays’ spokeswoman Nicola Hankey declined to comment when contacted by Bloomberg News today.
Barclays said March 16 it was in talks to sell the exchange-traded funds unit to bolster capital without turning over a stake to the U.K. government. Rivals Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc and Lloyds Banking Group Plc boosted capital through a state asset-insurance plan that allowed increased state ownership of the companies.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601102&sid=afYDFiZGeZd4&refer=uk
Satanism/Mind Control Murder in S. Africa
Satanism defence to be used in Lotter murder trial "Siblings Nicolette and Hardus Lotter, who are accused of murdering their parents at their Westville home last year, intend raising Satanism to counter the charges, a defence rarely used in SA, says a Cape Times report. ... "
http://www.legalbrief.co.za/article.php?story=2009031208292343
(Subscription site)
•••
‘Son of God’ behind Lotter murders
East Coast News Watch/Oct. 16, 2008
A Durban man described by his co-accused as the “Son of God” had manipulated the Lotter siblings and was behind the planning of their parents’ double murder, the Pinetown Regional Court has heard.
Investigating officer Constable Kubendran Naidoo was outlining Mathew Naidoo’s confession as well as those given by the siblings.The confessions were being highlighted at Naidoo’s bail application yesterday where he stood in the dock with his girlfriend Nicolette Lotter and her brother Hardus.
They are accused of killing Johannes and Magdalena Lotter at their Westville home in July.
“In a nutshell, he [Naidoo] said he manipulated accused one and two [Hardus and Nicolette] and he planned the murder and convinced accused one and two to kill their parents,” the officer told the court.
“In his confession, he makes mention of the day of the murder, the event leading up to the murders, his involvement, where he was during the murder, and his role in the murders”.
The court heard that Hardus, in his confession, spoke of the planning of the murders, the day of the murder, where equipment used in the murders was purchased and his role in the crime itself.
Nicolette in her confession spoke of how she had met Naidoo and “the two prior attempts on killing her father”.
The officer said she had also written about the purchasing of items used in the murder, the staging of the crime scene and her role in the crime.
Representing Mathew, defence attorney Rajendra Nathalal argued that the State did not have a good case as the police relied solely on the three confessions.
In response the officer said the State had a strong case despite the fact that there were no eyewitness statements.
He said police were also relying on crucial evidence that had been pointed out by the applicant in dustbins at two intersections in Westville.
Police found syringes, three pairs of gloves, cable ties, insulation tape, a sock and the bloodied clothing belonging to the siblings.
The officer said the police were still awaiting the results of forensic tests.
The hearing continues.
(Source: Sapa)
http://blog.ecr.co.za/newswatch/?p=3108
Dark Knight Director's Brother Arrested for Murder (Revised and Expanded)
Related: "Collected Heath Ledger Updates"
by JOSH GROSSBERG
Mar. 20, 2009
Matthew Francis Nolan, the older brother of Dark Knight director Christopher Nolan, has been arrested by the FBI in his hometown of Chicago and is now awaiting extradition to Costa Rica to face murder and kidnapping charges.
According to the the bureau's Windy City office, the Violent Crimes Task Force apprehended the 40-year-old Nolan without incident as he was leaving a bankruptcy court hearing yesterday.
Nolan has been wanted in Costa Rica since 2006, when local authorities charged him with the kidnapping and murder of a Florida businessman a year earlier.
According to the FBI complaint, the elder Nolan concocted a Joker-worthy plot to lure the victim, Robert Cohen, to a hotel by pretending to be a multimillionaire jewel merchant hoping to do a business deal. Instead, Nolan intended to recoup $7 million Cohen owed another Florida man. Nolan and an accomplice, Douglas Mejia, allegedly held Cohen ransom in hopes of extracting the money, but when the family failed to meet their demands, they killed him, per the complaint.
Mejia was convicted of kidnapping and murder and is now in prison.
Nolan was collared just as police were probing his role in a separate $700,000 bank-fraud scheme. He's been ordered held without bond until extradition proceedings are completed.
Nolan's 38-year-old sibling, Christopher, broke into Hollywood with the mind-bending thriller Memento and has since gone on to reinvent the Caped Crusader in 2005's Batman Begins and 2008's The Dark Knight. The latter—cowritten by their younger brother, Jonathan—has since become the second-highest grossing film of all time.
http://www.eonline.com/uberblog/b105428_dark_knight_directors_brother_arrested.html
Kidnapped!
Excerpt: 'Dark Knight' Director's Brother Wanted for Murder?
by Dawn Taylor
cinematical.com
Mar 20th 2009
... Matthew Francis Nolan, 40, is wanted in Costa Rica for the kidnapping and murder of a Florida businessman. Nolan allegedly presented himself to the now-deceased Robert C. Cohen as an investor, claiming he wanted to do business in South America. But his real mission, authorities say, was to get $7 million that Cohen owed another man in Florida.
Nolan's accomplice, Douglas Mejia, has already been convicted of kidnapping Cohen when he and Nolan attempted to extort the money from Cohen's family. When that failed, cops say that the pair killed him.
Nolan was already under investigation by the FBI regarding an unrelated $700,000 bank-fraud scheme. He's now being held in the U.S., awaiting extradition.
Christopher Nolan collaborated with another brother, Jonathan, on the scripts for Memento, The Prestige, and The Dark Knight, and Jonathan is credited with the upcoming Terminator: Salvation -- it looks like they don't have to search too far to find inspiration for the darker themes in their screenplays. A lot of families have black sheep, but who knew that Nolan's own brother might be the Joker?
http://www.cinematical.com/2009/03/20/dark-knight-directors-brother-wanted-for-murder/
Conspiracy
Still others at large in murder of U.S. citizen Robert Cohen
A.M. Costa Rica/May 14, 2007, Vol. 7, No. 94
By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
A conviction has been handed down in the murder of U.S. citizen Robert Cohen, but the case is hardly over.
Still at large is the U.S. citizen identified as a hit man and the person who arranged Cohen's kidnapping March 6, 2005, according to prosecutors in Limón. And there is the question who contracted the hit man. Suspicion has fallen on a man who lost $7 million here.
As a result of the trial, the possibility emerged that Cohen may have been falsely accused and killed for no reason. Both Cohen and another man were employed by the same development company. But the other man committed suicide and may have been the person who took the money. The money has not turned up, said Cristian Ulate, the prosecutor on the case.
A three-judge court in Limón gave a Honduran citizen 27 years in prison Friday after convicting him in the murder of Cohen. The same panel said there was not sufficient evidence to convict a second suspect, a woman named Anabel Chacón Sánchez. The panel said that her participation in the crime was not clear.
Sentenced was Luis Alonso Douglas Mejía. The panel gave him 25 years for the murder and two years for depriving Cohen of his liberty.
Cohen, 64 at the time of his death, was a developer from Granada, Nicaragua, who was found at the Río Chirripó. The prosecution said that he was abducted, beaten and murdered as a lesson for losing the $7 million in a business transaction.
Cohen was grabbed when he left an Escazú hotel to exercise about 7 a.m. Although he had a development project in Grenada, Cohen was based in Costa Rica.
Ulate said that Cohen had made three telephone calls while he was being held. He made a desperate attempt to disclose his location. He spoke with his wife Susan Cohen and a daughter Alisha Cohen, said Ulate.
In his third and final call, Cohen told his wife that he was going to drink a limonchelo upon his release. That is a mythical drink and a word he made up simply to tell them that he was being held near Limón, said Ulate.
Instead of going free, the evidence showed that Cohen was beaten and tortured before his murder.
Ulate said the man who engineered the kidnapping here was Mathew Francis Nolan, who entered the country on a false passport. He is being sought internationally. However, Ulate said that the U.S. Department of Justice has denied requests for extradition in the case. Instead, if there is any legal action it will be in the United States.
http://www.amcostarica.com/051407.htm
Murder and Cover-Up
Excerpt: Still others at large in murder of U.S. citizen Robert Cohen
http://www.amcostarica.com/051407.htm
... Cohen was well-known in Granada and was the developer of a major townhome project there. He entered Costa Rica on business March 2 and walked out of the Intercontinental Hotel near Multiplaza in Escazú about 7 a.m. March 6.
Agents alleged that the suspect [Mejia] was among those who grabbed Cohen and held him hostage in a dwelling at Barras de Moin near Limón.
The spokesman said that while Cohen was confined his abductors beat him brutally to get him to surrender the personal identification numbers that would allow them to access his bank accounts. Agents believe that Cohen refused to surrender the numbers and died from the increasingly brutal beatings that left marks all over his body [denied by police - next paragraph]. ...
Investigators initially said that Cohen, a U.S. citizen, was the victim of drowning. They also said that the body bore few marks except superficial knife wounds. [Cover-up]
The complex Cohen was developing is on hold, according to a report from Granada. The complex was to be deluxe townhomes of 1,506 square feet in a gated community with fabulous views of Lake Nicaragua, according to the Web site of Coldwell Banker Nicaragua, which was to market the project. Prices started at $175,000.
A man who sought to do business with Cohen said he believed the man spent more time in Costa Rica than Nicaragua, despite the project.
Friends also said Cohen was a street-smart individual who would not get into just any car without a good reason.
http://www.amcostarica.com/051105.htm
by JOSH GROSSBERG
Mar. 20, 2009
Matthew Francis Nolan, the older brother of Dark Knight director Christopher Nolan, has been arrested by the FBI in his hometown of Chicago and is now awaiting extradition to Costa Rica to face murder and kidnapping charges.According to the the bureau's Windy City office, the Violent Crimes Task Force apprehended the 40-year-old Nolan without incident as he was leaving a bankruptcy court hearing yesterday.
Nolan has been wanted in Costa Rica since 2006, when local authorities charged him with the kidnapping and murder of a Florida businessman a year earlier.
According to the FBI complaint, the elder Nolan concocted a Joker-worthy plot to lure the victim, Robert Cohen, to a hotel by pretending to be a multimillionaire jewel merchant hoping to do a business deal. Instead, Nolan intended to recoup $7 million Cohen owed another Florida man. Nolan and an accomplice, Douglas Mejia, allegedly held Cohen ransom in hopes of extracting the money, but when the family failed to meet their demands, they killed him, per the complaint.
Mejia was convicted of kidnapping and murder and is now in prison.
Nolan was collared just as police were probing his role in a separate $700,000 bank-fraud scheme. He's been ordered held without bond until extradition proceedings are completed.
Nolan's 38-year-old sibling, Christopher, broke into Hollywood with the mind-bending thriller Memento and has since gone on to reinvent the Caped Crusader in 2005's Batman Begins and 2008's The Dark Knight. The latter—cowritten by their younger brother, Jonathan—has since become the second-highest grossing film of all time.
http://www.eonline.com/uberblog/b105428_dark_knight_directors_brother_arrested.html
Kidnapped!
Excerpt: 'Dark Knight' Director's Brother Wanted for Murder?
by Dawn Taylor
cinematical.com
Mar 20th 2009
... Matthew Francis Nolan, 40, is wanted in Costa Rica for the kidnapping and murder of a Florida businessman. Nolan allegedly presented himself to the now-deceased Robert C. Cohen as an investor, claiming he wanted to do business in South America. But his real mission, authorities say, was to get $7 million that Cohen owed another man in Florida.
Nolan's accomplice, Douglas Mejia, has already been convicted of kidnapping Cohen when he and Nolan attempted to extort the money from Cohen's family. When that failed, cops say that the pair killed him.
Nolan was already under investigation by the FBI regarding an unrelated $700,000 bank-fraud scheme. He's now being held in the U.S., awaiting extradition.
Christopher Nolan collaborated with another brother, Jonathan, on the scripts for Memento, The Prestige, and The Dark Knight, and Jonathan is credited with the upcoming Terminator: Salvation -- it looks like they don't have to search too far to find inspiration for the darker themes in their screenplays. A lot of families have black sheep, but who knew that Nolan's own brother might be the Joker?
http://www.cinematical.com/2009/03/20/dark-knight-directors-brother-wanted-for-murder/
Conspiracy
Still others at large in murder of U.S. citizen Robert Cohen
A.M. Costa Rica/May 14, 2007, Vol. 7, No. 94
By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
A conviction has been handed down in the murder of U.S. citizen Robert Cohen, but the case is hardly over.
Still at large is the U.S. citizen identified as a hit man and the person who arranged Cohen's kidnapping March 6, 2005, according to prosecutors in Limón. And there is the question who contracted the hit man. Suspicion has fallen on a man who lost $7 million here.
As a result of the trial, the possibility emerged that Cohen may have been falsely accused and killed for no reason. Both Cohen and another man were employed by the same development company. But the other man committed suicide and may have been the person who took the money. The money has not turned up, said Cristian Ulate, the prosecutor on the case.
A three-judge court in Limón gave a Honduran citizen 27 years in prison Friday after convicting him in the murder of Cohen. The same panel said there was not sufficient evidence to convict a second suspect, a woman named Anabel Chacón Sánchez. The panel said that her participation in the crime was not clear.
Sentenced was Luis Alonso Douglas Mejía. The panel gave him 25 years for the murder and two years for depriving Cohen of his liberty.
Cohen, 64 at the time of his death, was a developer from Granada, Nicaragua, who was found at the Río Chirripó. The prosecution said that he was abducted, beaten and murdered as a lesson for losing the $7 million in a business transaction.
Cohen was grabbed when he left an Escazú hotel to exercise about 7 a.m. Although he had a development project in Grenada, Cohen was based in Costa Rica.
Ulate said that Cohen had made three telephone calls while he was being held. He made a desperate attempt to disclose his location. He spoke with his wife Susan Cohen and a daughter Alisha Cohen, said Ulate.
In his third and final call, Cohen told his wife that he was going to drink a limonchelo upon his release. That is a mythical drink and a word he made up simply to tell them that he was being held near Limón, said Ulate.
Instead of going free, the evidence showed that Cohen was beaten and tortured before his murder.
Ulate said the man who engineered the kidnapping here was Mathew Francis Nolan, who entered the country on a false passport. He is being sought internationally. However, Ulate said that the U.S. Department of Justice has denied requests for extradition in the case. Instead, if there is any legal action it will be in the United States.
http://www.amcostarica.com/051407.htm
Murder and Cover-Up
Excerpt: Still others at large in murder of U.S. citizen Robert Cohen
http://www.amcostarica.com/051407.htm
... Cohen was well-known in Granada and was the developer of a major townhome project there. He entered Costa Rica on business March 2 and walked out of the Intercontinental Hotel near Multiplaza in Escazú about 7 a.m. March 6.
Agents alleged that the suspect [Mejia] was among those who grabbed Cohen and held him hostage in a dwelling at Barras de Moin near Limón.
The spokesman said that while Cohen was confined his abductors beat him brutally to get him to surrender the personal identification numbers that would allow them to access his bank accounts. Agents believe that Cohen refused to surrender the numbers and died from the increasingly brutal beatings that left marks all over his body [denied by police - next paragraph]. ...
Investigators initially said that Cohen, a U.S. citizen, was the victim of drowning. They also said that the body bore few marks except superficial knife wounds. [Cover-up]
The complex Cohen was developing is on hold, according to a report from Granada. The complex was to be deluxe townhomes of 1,506 square feet in a gated community with fabulous views of Lake Nicaragua, according to the Web site of Coldwell Banker Nicaragua, which was to market the project. Prices started at $175,000.
A man who sought to do business with Cohen said he believed the man spent more time in Costa Rica than Nicaragua, despite the project.
Friends also said Cohen was a street-smart individual who would not get into just any car without a good reason.
http://www.amcostarica.com/051105.htm
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Chavez Government Moves to Arrest and Jail Leading Venezuela Opposition Leader
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez took a big step closer Thursday to his stated goal of putting his last rival for the presidency, Manuel Rosales, behind bars.By Jeremy Morgan
Latin American Herald Tribune
CARACAS – A prosecutor petitioned the judicial authorities to issue a warrant to place Manuel Rosales, a prominent opposition figure, in custody on the basis of alleged corruption while he was governor of Zulia state in western Venezuela.
Rosales is currently mayor of Maracaibo, the state capital of Zulia, and before that governor of the state for two consecutive terms. He also challenged President Hugo Chávez at the elections in 2006, and while losing by a margin of three votes to two, did better than many observers had expected. In the process, he established himself as a key figure and de facto leader of the opposition.
Prosecutor Katiuska Plaza announced that she was seeking the custody order from the judiciary in Zulia on the basis of accusations leveled by the National Assembly against Rosales. The National Assembly is almost entirely dominated by Chávez’ ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) and its allies.
The charges contemplated in Plaza’s petition were reckoned to imply jail sentences ranging between three and 10 years on conviction. Rosales has faced a flurry of accusations, many of them vague or as yet not filed at a court, since he went up against Chávez for the presidency.
Since then, and on more than one occasion, Chávez has vowed publicly that he intends to put Rosales behind bars. In December, Chavez announced that he was "determined to put Manuel Rosales in jail." Before the November election, he had threatened to launch "a military plan" against Rosales if he won. He has also threatened to "wipe [Rosales] from the political map."
Recently, he’s extended that threat to the opposition governors of the state of Zulia (Pablo Pérez), Carabobo (Henrique Salas Feo) and Nueva Esparta (Morel Rodríguez) after they attacked the legality of his takeover order of ports, airports and highways in their states.
Reacting to the news, Rosales dismissed Plaza’s move as a response to “an order from Chávez” and said he’d fight against it in all ways possible. “I’m going to meet with the lawyers and we will study the document that they presented,” he said in a lengthy and blistering statement to the media. ...
CONTINUED
http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=330003&CategoryId=10718
Dark Knight Director's Brother Arrested for Murder
Related: "Collected Heath Ledger Updates"
by JOSH GROSSBERG
Mar. 20, 2009
Matthew Francis Nolan, the older brother of Dark Knight director Christopher Nolan, has been arrested by the FBI in his hometown of Chicago and is now awaiting extradition to Costa Rica to face murder and kidnapping charges.
According to the the bureau's Windy City office, the Violent Crimes Task Force apprehended the 40-year-old Nolan without incident as he was leaving a bankruptcy court hearing yesterday.
Nolan has been wanted in Costa Rica since 2006, when local authorities charged him with the kidnapping and murder of a Florida businessman a year earlier.
According to the FBI complaint, the elder Nolan concocted a Joker-worthy plot to lure the victim, Robert Cohen, to a hotel by pretending to be a multimillionaire jewel merchant hoping to do a business deal. Instead, Nolan intended to recoup $7 million Cohen owed another Florida man. Nolan and an accomplice, Douglas Mejia, allegedly held Cohen ransom in hopes of extracting the money, but when the family failed to meet their demands, they killed him, per the complaint.
Mejia was convicted of kidnapping and murder and is now in prison.
Nolan was collared just as police were probing his role in a separate $700,000 bank-fraud scheme. He's been ordered held without bond until extradition proceedings are completed.
Nolan's 38-year-old sibling, Christopher, broke into Hollywood with the mind-bending thriller Memento and has since gone on to reinvent the Caped Crusader in 2005's Batman Begins and 2008's The Dark Knight. The latter—cowritten by their younger brother, Jonathan—has since become the second-highest grossing film of all time.
http://www.eonline.com/uberblog/b105428_dark_knight_directors_brother_arrested.html
Kidnapped!
Excerpt: 'Dark Knight' Director's Brother Wanted for Murder?
by Dawn Taylor
cinematical.com
Mar 20th 2009
... Matthew Francis Nolan, 40, is wanted in Costa Rica for the kidnapping and murder of a Florida businessman. Nolan allegedly presented himself to the now-deceased Robert C. Cohen as an investor, claiming he wanted to do business in South America. But his real mission, authorities say, was to get $7 million that Cohen owed another man in Florida.
Nolan's accomplice, Douglas Mejia, has already been convicted of kidnapping Cohen when he and Nolan attempted to extort the money from Cohen's family. When that failed, cops say that the pair killed him.
Nolan was already under investigation by the FBI regarding an unrelated $700,000 bank-fraud scheme. He's now being held in the U.S., awaiting extradition.
Christopher Nolan collaborated with another brother, Jonathan, on the scripts for Memento, The Prestige, and The Dark Knight, and Jonathan is credited with the upcoming Terminator: Salvation -- it looks like they don't have to search too far to find inspiration for the darker themes in their screenplays. A lot of families have black sheep, but who knew that Nolan's own brother might be the Joker?
http://www.cinematical.com/2009/03/20/dark-knight-directors-brother-wanted-for-murder/
Conspiracy
Still others at large in murder of U.S. citizen Robert Cohen
By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
A conviction has been handed down in the murder of U.S. citizen Robert Cohen, but the case is hardly over.
Still at large is the U.S. citizen identified as a hit man and the person who arranged Cohen's kidnapping March 6, 2005, according to prosecutors in Limón. And there is the question who contracted the hit man. Suspicion has fallen on a man who lost $7 million here.
As a result of the trial, the possibility emerged that Cohen may have been falsely accused and killed for no reason. Both Cohen and another man were employed by the same development company. But the other man committed suicide and may have been the person who took the money. The money has not turned up, said Cristian Ulate, the prosecutor on the case.
A three-judge court in Limón gave a Honduran citizen 27 years in prison Friday after convicting him in the murder of Cohen. The same panel said there was not sufficient evidence to convict a second suspect, a woman named Anabel Chacón Sánchez. The panel said that her participation in the crime was not clear.
Sentenced was Luis Alonso Douglas Mejía. The panel gave him 25 years for the murder and two years for depriving Cohen of his liberty.
Cohen, 64 at the time of his death, was a developer from Granada, Nicaragua, who was found at the Río Chirripó. The prosecution said that he was abducted, beaten and murdered as a lesson for losing the $7 million in a business transaction.
Cohen was grabbed when he left an Escazú hotel to exercise about 7 a.m. Although he had a development project in Grenada, Cohen was based in Costa Rica.
Ulate said that Cohen had made three telephone calls while he was being held. He made a desperate attempt to disclose his location. He spoke with his wife Susan Cohen and a daughter Alisha Cohen, said Ulate.
In his third and final call, Cohen told his wife that he was going to drink a limonchelo upon his release. That is a mythical drink and a word he made up simply to tell them that he was being held near Limón, said Ulate.
Instead of going free, the evidence showed that Cohen was beaten and tortured before his murder.
Ulate said the man who engineered the kidnapping here was Mathew Francis Nolan, who entered the country on a false passport. He is being sought internationally. However, Ulate said that the U.S. Department of Justice has denied requests for extradition in the case. Instead, if there is any legal action it will be in the United States.
http://www.amcostarica.com/051407.htm
by JOSH GROSSBERG
Mar. 20, 2009
Matthew Francis Nolan, the older brother of Dark Knight director Christopher Nolan, has been arrested by the FBI in his hometown of Chicago and is now awaiting extradition to Costa Rica to face murder and kidnapping charges.
According to the the bureau's Windy City office, the Violent Crimes Task Force apprehended the 40-year-old Nolan without incident as he was leaving a bankruptcy court hearing yesterday.
Nolan has been wanted in Costa Rica since 2006, when local authorities charged him with the kidnapping and murder of a Florida businessman a year earlier.
According to the FBI complaint, the elder Nolan concocted a Joker-worthy plot to lure the victim, Robert Cohen, to a hotel by pretending to be a multimillionaire jewel merchant hoping to do a business deal. Instead, Nolan intended to recoup $7 million Cohen owed another Florida man. Nolan and an accomplice, Douglas Mejia, allegedly held Cohen ransom in hopes of extracting the money, but when the family failed to meet their demands, they killed him, per the complaint.
Mejia was convicted of kidnapping and murder and is now in prison.
Nolan was collared just as police were probing his role in a separate $700,000 bank-fraud scheme. He's been ordered held without bond until extradition proceedings are completed.
Nolan's 38-year-old sibling, Christopher, broke into Hollywood with the mind-bending thriller Memento and has since gone on to reinvent the Caped Crusader in 2005's Batman Begins and 2008's The Dark Knight. The latter—cowritten by their younger brother, Jonathan—has since become the second-highest grossing film of all time.
http://www.eonline.com/uberblog/b105428_dark_knight_directors_brother_arrested.html
Kidnapped!
Excerpt: 'Dark Knight' Director's Brother Wanted for Murder?
by Dawn Taylor
cinematical.com
Mar 20th 2009
... Matthew Francis Nolan, 40, is wanted in Costa Rica for the kidnapping and murder of a Florida businessman. Nolan allegedly presented himself to the now-deceased Robert C. Cohen as an investor, claiming he wanted to do business in South America. But his real mission, authorities say, was to get $7 million that Cohen owed another man in Florida.
Nolan's accomplice, Douglas Mejia, has already been convicted of kidnapping Cohen when he and Nolan attempted to extort the money from Cohen's family. When that failed, cops say that the pair killed him.
Nolan was already under investigation by the FBI regarding an unrelated $700,000 bank-fraud scheme. He's now being held in the U.S., awaiting extradition.
Christopher Nolan collaborated with another brother, Jonathan, on the scripts for Memento, The Prestige, and The Dark Knight, and Jonathan is credited with the upcoming Terminator: Salvation -- it looks like they don't have to search too far to find inspiration for the darker themes in their screenplays. A lot of families have black sheep, but who knew that Nolan's own brother might be the Joker?
http://www.cinematical.com/2009/03/20/dark-knight-directors-brother-wanted-for-murder/
Conspiracy
Still others at large in murder of U.S. citizen Robert Cohen
By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
A conviction has been handed down in the murder of U.S. citizen Robert Cohen, but the case is hardly over.
Still at large is the U.S. citizen identified as a hit man and the person who arranged Cohen's kidnapping March 6, 2005, according to prosecutors in Limón. And there is the question who contracted the hit man. Suspicion has fallen on a man who lost $7 million here.
As a result of the trial, the possibility emerged that Cohen may have been falsely accused and killed for no reason. Both Cohen and another man were employed by the same development company. But the other man committed suicide and may have been the person who took the money. The money has not turned up, said Cristian Ulate, the prosecutor on the case.
A three-judge court in Limón gave a Honduran citizen 27 years in prison Friday after convicting him in the murder of Cohen. The same panel said there was not sufficient evidence to convict a second suspect, a woman named Anabel Chacón Sánchez. The panel said that her participation in the crime was not clear.
Sentenced was Luis Alonso Douglas Mejía. The panel gave him 25 years for the murder and two years for depriving Cohen of his liberty.
Cohen, 64 at the time of his death, was a developer from Granada, Nicaragua, who was found at the Río Chirripó. The prosecution said that he was abducted, beaten and murdered as a lesson for losing the $7 million in a business transaction.
Cohen was grabbed when he left an Escazú hotel to exercise about 7 a.m. Although he had a development project in Grenada, Cohen was based in Costa Rica.
Ulate said that Cohen had made three telephone calls while he was being held. He made a desperate attempt to disclose his location. He spoke with his wife Susan Cohen and a daughter Alisha Cohen, said Ulate.
In his third and final call, Cohen told his wife that he was going to drink a limonchelo upon his release. That is a mythical drink and a word he made up simply to tell them that he was being held near Limón, said Ulate.
Instead of going free, the evidence showed that Cohen was beaten and tortured before his murder.
Ulate said the man who engineered the kidnapping here was Mathew Francis Nolan, who entered the country on a false passport. He is being sought internationally. However, Ulate said that the U.S. Department of Justice has denied requests for extradition in the case. Instead, if there is any legal action it will be in the United States.
http://www.amcostarica.com/051407.htm
The Long and Sadistic History Behind the CIA's Torture Techniques
By Darius Rejali
Slate
March 21, 2009
In the 20th century, there were two main traditions of clean torture -- the kind that doesn't leave marks, as modern torturers prefer. The first is French modern, a combination of water- and electro-torture. The second is Anglo-Saxon modern, a classic list of sleep deprivation, positional and restraint tortures, extremes of temperature, noise, and beatings.
All the techniques in the accounts of torture by the International Committee of the Red Cross, as reported Monday, collected from 14 detainees held in CIA custody, fit a long historical pattern of Anglo-Saxon modern. The ICRC report apparently includes details of CIA practices unknown until now, details that point to practices with names, histories, and political influences. In torture, hell is always in the details.
The ice-water cure. "On a daily basis during the first two weeks I was made to lie on a plastic sheet placed on the floor which would then be lifted at the edges. Cold water was then poured onto my body with buckets. ... I would be kept wrapped inside the sheet with the cold water for several minutes. I would then be taken for interrogation," detainee Walid bin Attash told the Red Cross.
In the 1920s, the Chicago police used to extract confessions from prisoners by chilling them in freezing water baths. This was called the "ice-water cure." That's not its first use. During World War I, American military prisons subjected conscientious objectors to ice-water showers and baths until they fainted. The technique appeared in some British penal colonies as well; occasionally in Soviet interrogation in the 1930s; and more commonly in fascist Spain, Vichy France, and Gestapo-occupied Belgium. The Allies also used it against people they regarded as war criminals and terrorists. Between 1940 and 1948, British interrogators used "cold-water showers" as part of a brutal interrogation regimen in a clandestine London prison for German POWs accused of war crimes. French Paras also used cold showers occasionally in Algeria in the 1950s. In the 1970s, Greek, Chilean, Israeli, and Syrian interrogators made prisoners stand under cold showers or in cold pools for long periods. And American soldiers in Vietnam called it the "old cold-water-hot-water treatment" in the 1960s.
Cold cell. Abu Zubaydah, another detainee, says, "I woke up, naked, strapped to a bed, in a very white room. … [T]he cell and room were air-conditioned and were very cold." There, he was shackled to a chair for two to three weeks. "Cold cell" is one of six known authorized CIA interrogation techniques.
Since the 1960s, torturers have adapted air vents to put "the air in a state of war with me," in the words of one prisoner. In the first recorded case in 1961, guards at Parchman, Mississippi's state penitentiary, blasted civil rights detainees with a fire hose and then turned "the air-conditioning system on full blast" for three days. In 1965, detainees in Aden reported that British guards kept them "undressed in very cold cells with air conditioners and fans running at full speed." In other countries, interrogators have forced prisoners to stand or squat for long periods in front of blasting air-conditioning units or fans, as in South Vietnam (1970s), Singapore (1970s), the Philippines (1976), Taiwan (1980), South Africa (1980s), and Israel (1991 to present).
In a scene eerily similar to the CIA interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, South Vietnamese torturers held Vhuen Van Tai, the highest-ranking Viet Cong officer captured, in a windowless white room outfitted with heavy-duty air conditioners for four years. Frank Snepp, a CIA interrogator who interviewed him in 1972 in the room regularly, described Tai as "thoroughly chilled."
Water-boarding. Abu Zubaydah says that after he was strapped to a bed, "[a] black cloth was then placed over my face and the interrogators used a mineral water bottle to pour water on the cloth so that I could not breathe. The contents of the mineral-water bottle were carbonated, this would be a well-known Mexican police technique (tehuacanazo), documented since the 1980s. The Mexican signature mark is to mix in a little chili pepper before forcing the water down the nasal passage.
Water-boarding is not a technical term in torture, and reports have described several different water tortures under this name. The ICRC report puts to rest which kind the CIA used. It turns out to be the traditional "water cure," an antique Dutch technique invented in the East Indies in the 17th century. It migrated here after American troops returned from the Philippine insurgency in the early 20th century. By the 1930s, the water cure was favored by the Southern police. Interrogators tie or hold down a victim on his back. Then they pour water down his nostrils "so as to strangle him, thus causing pain and horror for the purpose of forcing a confession." Sometimes torturers cover the face with a napkin, making it difficult for the prisoner to breathe, as the ICRC report describes.
Sweatboxes and coubarils. Abu Zubaydah says, "Two black wooden boxes were brought into the room outside my cell. One was tall, slightly higher than me and narrow. … The other was shorter, perhaps only [3 feet 6 inches] in height." The large box, which Abu Zubaydah says he was held in for up to two hours, is a classic sweatbox. Sweatboxes are old, and they came into modern torture from traditional Asian penal practices. If you've seen Bridge on the River Kwai, you know the Japanese used them in POW camps in World War II. They are still common in East Asia. The Chinese used them during the Korean War, and Chinese prisoners today relate accounts of squeeze cells (xiaohao, literally "small number"), dark cells (heiwu), and extremely hot or cold cells. In Vietnam, they are dubbed variously "dark cells," "tiger cages," or "connex boxes," which are metal and heat up rapidly in the tropical sun.
Abu Zubaydah was also placed into the smaller box, in which he was forced to crouch for hours, until "the stress on my legs held in this position meant my wounds both in the leg and stomach became very painful." This smaller type of box was once called a coubaril. Coubarils often bent the body in an uncomfortable position. They were standard in French penal colonies in New Guinea in the 19th century, where some prisoners were held in them for 16 days at a stretch.
Both kinds of boxes entered American prison and military practice in the 19th century. They were a standard part of naval discipline, and the word sweatbox comes from the Civil War era. In the 1970s, prisoners described sweatboxes in South Vietnam, Iran (tabout, or "coffin"), Israel, and Turkey ("tortoise cell"). In the last three decades, prisoners have reported the use of sweatboxes in Brazil (cofrinho), Honduras (cajones), and Paraguay (guardia). And after 2002, Iraqi prisoners held in U.S. detention centers describe "cells so small that they could neither stand nor lie down," as well as a box known as "the coffin" at the U.S. detention center at Qaim near Syria.
Standing cells. Walid Bin Attash says, "I was put in a cell measuring approximately [3 feet 6 inches-by-6 feet 6 inches]. I was kept in a standing position, feet flat on the floor, but with my arms above my head and fixed with handcuffs and a chain to a metal bar running across the width of the cell." Over the last century, many prisons had built-in, tall, narrow, coffin-size cells, in which prisoners were forced to stand for hours, their hands chained to the ceiling. In the early 20th century, the women's prison in Gainesville, Texas, had a standing cell in the dining room so that prisoners could smell the food.
High-cuffing. Detainees routinely describe having their hands cuffed high above their heads while they stand with their feet on the ground. This is less damaging than full suspension by the wrists, which causes permanent nerve damage in 15 minutes to an average-size man. High-cuffing increases the time prisoners may be suspended, elongates the pain, and delays permanent injury. It is a restraint torture, as opposed to a positional torture, which requires prisoners to assume a normal human position (standing or sitting), but for a prolonged period of time.
High-cuffing is an old slave punishment of the Americas, once called "hanging from the rafters." John Brown, a free slave, said of it, "Some tie them up in a very uneasy posture, where they must stand all night, and they will then work them hard all day." American military prisons adopted the practice in World War I. High-cuffing was the standard prescribed military punishment for desertion, insubordination, and conscientious objection. Prisoners were handcuffed to their cell door eight to nine hours a day, in one case for up to 50 days. They described high-cuffing as excruciatingly painful, and the American public, otherwise unsympathetic with these prisoners, found the practice appalling, sparking a newspaper debate over "manacling" in November 1918. A month later, the War Department rescinded high-cuffing as a mode of punishment.
Towels, collars, and plywood. Sometimes torturers come up with something entirely new. "Also," says Abu Zubaydah, "on a daily basis during the first two weeks a collar was looped around my neck and then used to slam me against the walls of the interrogation room. It was also placed around my neck when being taken out of my cell for interrogation and was used to lead me along the corridor. It was also used to slam me against the walls of the corridor during such movements."
This is a novel approach to beating someone in a way that leaves few marks. For 30 years, I've studied a long and remorseless two centuries of torture around the world, and I can find only one instance of an account resembling the collars and plywood technique described in the ICRC report. It's American. During World War I, conscientious objectors in military prisons report that their guards dragged them like animals with a rope around the neck, across rough floors, slamming them into walls. This one, as far as I can tell, is entirely homegrown.
AlterNet is making this material available in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107: This article is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
Darius Rejali is a professor of political science and the author of Torture and Democracy, the winner of the 2007 Human Rights Best Book Award of the American Political Science Association.
Slate
March 21, 2009
In the 20th century, there were two main traditions of clean torture -- the kind that doesn't leave marks, as modern torturers prefer. The first is French modern, a combination of water- and electro-torture. The second is Anglo-Saxon modern, a classic list of sleep deprivation, positional and restraint tortures, extremes of temperature, noise, and beatings.
All the techniques in the accounts of torture by the International Committee of the Red Cross, as reported Monday, collected from 14 detainees held in CIA custody, fit a long historical pattern of Anglo-Saxon modern. The ICRC report apparently includes details of CIA practices unknown until now, details that point to practices with names, histories, and political influences. In torture, hell is always in the details.
The ice-water cure. "On a daily basis during the first two weeks I was made to lie on a plastic sheet placed on the floor which would then be lifted at the edges. Cold water was then poured onto my body with buckets. ... I would be kept wrapped inside the sheet with the cold water for several minutes. I would then be taken for interrogation," detainee Walid bin Attash told the Red Cross.
In the 1920s, the Chicago police used to extract confessions from prisoners by chilling them in freezing water baths. This was called the "ice-water cure." That's not its first use. During World War I, American military prisons subjected conscientious objectors to ice-water showers and baths until they fainted. The technique appeared in some British penal colonies as well; occasionally in Soviet interrogation in the 1930s; and more commonly in fascist Spain, Vichy France, and Gestapo-occupied Belgium. The Allies also used it against people they regarded as war criminals and terrorists. Between 1940 and 1948, British interrogators used "cold-water showers" as part of a brutal interrogation regimen in a clandestine London prison for German POWs accused of war crimes. French Paras also used cold showers occasionally in Algeria in the 1950s. In the 1970s, Greek, Chilean, Israeli, and Syrian interrogators made prisoners stand under cold showers or in cold pools for long periods. And American soldiers in Vietnam called it the "old cold-water-hot-water treatment" in the 1960s.
Cold cell. Abu Zubaydah, another detainee, says, "I woke up, naked, strapped to a bed, in a very white room. … [T]he cell and room were air-conditioned and were very cold." There, he was shackled to a chair for two to three weeks. "Cold cell" is one of six known authorized CIA interrogation techniques.
Since the 1960s, torturers have adapted air vents to put "the air in a state of war with me," in the words of one prisoner. In the first recorded case in 1961, guards at Parchman, Mississippi's state penitentiary, blasted civil rights detainees with a fire hose and then turned "the air-conditioning system on full blast" for three days. In 1965, detainees in Aden reported that British guards kept them "undressed in very cold cells with air conditioners and fans running at full speed." In other countries, interrogators have forced prisoners to stand or squat for long periods in front of blasting air-conditioning units or fans, as in South Vietnam (1970s), Singapore (1970s), the Philippines (1976), Taiwan (1980), South Africa (1980s), and Israel (1991 to present).
In a scene eerily similar to the CIA interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, South Vietnamese torturers held Vhuen Van Tai, the highest-ranking Viet Cong officer captured, in a windowless white room outfitted with heavy-duty air conditioners for four years. Frank Snepp, a CIA interrogator who interviewed him in 1972 in the room regularly, described Tai as "thoroughly chilled."
Water-boarding. Abu Zubaydah says that after he was strapped to a bed, "[a] black cloth was then placed over my face and the interrogators used a mineral water bottle to pour water on the cloth so that I could not breathe. The contents of the mineral-water bottle were carbonated, this would be a well-known Mexican police technique (tehuacanazo), documented since the 1980s. The Mexican signature mark is to mix in a little chili pepper before forcing the water down the nasal passage.
Water-boarding is not a technical term in torture, and reports have described several different water tortures under this name. The ICRC report puts to rest which kind the CIA used. It turns out to be the traditional "water cure," an antique Dutch technique invented in the East Indies in the 17th century. It migrated here after American troops returned from the Philippine insurgency in the early 20th century. By the 1930s, the water cure was favored by the Southern police. Interrogators tie or hold down a victim on his back. Then they pour water down his nostrils "so as to strangle him, thus causing pain and horror for the purpose of forcing a confession." Sometimes torturers cover the face with a napkin, making it difficult for the prisoner to breathe, as the ICRC report describes.
Sweatboxes and coubarils. Abu Zubaydah says, "Two black wooden boxes were brought into the room outside my cell. One was tall, slightly higher than me and narrow. … The other was shorter, perhaps only [3 feet 6 inches] in height." The large box, which Abu Zubaydah says he was held in for up to two hours, is a classic sweatbox. Sweatboxes are old, and they came into modern torture from traditional Asian penal practices. If you've seen Bridge on the River Kwai, you know the Japanese used them in POW camps in World War II. They are still common in East Asia. The Chinese used them during the Korean War, and Chinese prisoners today relate accounts of squeeze cells (xiaohao, literally "small number"), dark cells (heiwu), and extremely hot or cold cells. In Vietnam, they are dubbed variously "dark cells," "tiger cages," or "connex boxes," which are metal and heat up rapidly in the tropical sun.
Abu Zubaydah was also placed into the smaller box, in which he was forced to crouch for hours, until "the stress on my legs held in this position meant my wounds both in the leg and stomach became very painful." This smaller type of box was once called a coubaril. Coubarils often bent the body in an uncomfortable position. They were standard in French penal colonies in New Guinea in the 19th century, where some prisoners were held in them for 16 days at a stretch.
Both kinds of boxes entered American prison and military practice in the 19th century. They were a standard part of naval discipline, and the word sweatbox comes from the Civil War era. In the 1970s, prisoners described sweatboxes in South Vietnam, Iran (tabout, or "coffin"), Israel, and Turkey ("tortoise cell"). In the last three decades, prisoners have reported the use of sweatboxes in Brazil (cofrinho), Honduras (cajones), and Paraguay (guardia). And after 2002, Iraqi prisoners held in U.S. detention centers describe "cells so small that they could neither stand nor lie down," as well as a box known as "the coffin" at the U.S. detention center at Qaim near Syria.
Standing cells. Walid Bin Attash says, "I was put in a cell measuring approximately [3 feet 6 inches-by-6 feet 6 inches]. I was kept in a standing position, feet flat on the floor, but with my arms above my head and fixed with handcuffs and a chain to a metal bar running across the width of the cell." Over the last century, many prisons had built-in, tall, narrow, coffin-size cells, in which prisoners were forced to stand for hours, their hands chained to the ceiling. In the early 20th century, the women's prison in Gainesville, Texas, had a standing cell in the dining room so that prisoners could smell the food.
High-cuffing. Detainees routinely describe having their hands cuffed high above their heads while they stand with their feet on the ground. This is less damaging than full suspension by the wrists, which causes permanent nerve damage in 15 minutes to an average-size man. High-cuffing increases the time prisoners may be suspended, elongates the pain, and delays permanent injury. It is a restraint torture, as opposed to a positional torture, which requires prisoners to assume a normal human position (standing or sitting), but for a prolonged period of time.
High-cuffing is an old slave punishment of the Americas, once called "hanging from the rafters." John Brown, a free slave, said of it, "Some tie them up in a very uneasy posture, where they must stand all night, and they will then work them hard all day." American military prisons adopted the practice in World War I. High-cuffing was the standard prescribed military punishment for desertion, insubordination, and conscientious objection. Prisoners were handcuffed to their cell door eight to nine hours a day, in one case for up to 50 days. They described high-cuffing as excruciatingly painful, and the American public, otherwise unsympathetic with these prisoners, found the practice appalling, sparking a newspaper debate over "manacling" in November 1918. A month later, the War Department rescinded high-cuffing as a mode of punishment.
Towels, collars, and plywood. Sometimes torturers come up with something entirely new. "Also," says Abu Zubaydah, "on a daily basis during the first two weeks a collar was looped around my neck and then used to slam me against the walls of the interrogation room. It was also placed around my neck when being taken out of my cell for interrogation and was used to lead me along the corridor. It was also used to slam me against the walls of the corridor during such movements."
This is a novel approach to beating someone in a way that leaves few marks. For 30 years, I've studied a long and remorseless two centuries of torture around the world, and I can find only one instance of an account resembling the collars and plywood technique described in the ICRC report. It's American. During World War I, conscientious objectors in military prisons report that their guards dragged them like animals with a rope around the neck, across rough floors, slamming them into walls. This one, as far as I can tell, is entirely homegrown.
AlterNet is making this material available in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107: This article is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
Darius Rejali is a professor of political science and the author of Torture and Democracy, the winner of the 2007 Human Rights Best Book Award of the American Political Science Association.
Friday, March 20, 2009
HIGH-RISK INSURANCE CARRIER: AIG (REPOST FROM 6-07)
Also see: "AIG Chief didn't Always Defend Sanctity of Contracts"Edited by Alex Constantine
It's good to know who you are bailing out - at a cost of $1400 per family.
The following was posted by myself on June 17, 2007, well before the fall of AIG. (It was clear to me then that the firm's executives needed to be put in a prison - but the controlled mass media are very careful not to actually inform, and I'm a "conspiracy theorist" no one should listen to because I'm not a CIA mole on TV shaping reality to further deceive clueless American proles.)
This company couldn't bail out Katrina victims with valid homeowner's insurance contracts ... but we are forced by compulsory taxation to bail out the most fraudulent, cold-hearted and ethically toxic insurance company in the country:
http://www.scoreboard-canada.com/vp-rh01.htm
AIG (American International Group of Companies) boasts assets of over $800 billion and they do have a history of fraudulent acts at the higher levels of the company. They are ranked by the FBIC website in the top 10 hall of shame for payment of claims. ...
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Gas and Oil
volume 10, issue #20
October 26, 2005
http://www.gasandoil.com/goc/news/ntr54376.htm
Three men charged for bribing officials in former Soviet Republic
06-10-05
Three men including an executive with American International Group were charged with offering hundreds of millions of dollars -- as well as shopping sprees, jewellery and medical treatment -- to top officials in the former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan to get favourable treatment in oil deals.
Investment promoter Viktor Kozeny, Frederic Bourke Jr. and AIG executive David Pinkerton, were charged in a 27-count indictment in US District Court in Manhattan. The defendants each were charged with violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which makes it a crime to offer payment to foreign government officials to obtain or retain business.
The indictment said Kozeny, 42, an Irish citizen of Czech background, was president and chairman of Oily Rock Group and Minaret Group when he and the two other men -- both American citizens -- tried to buy off senior Azerbaijan officials.
Bourke, 59, of Greenwich, Connecticut, was an investor with Kozeny. Pinkerton, 44, of Bernardsville, New Jersey, wasan executive at American International Group, a US-based insurance company. He, too, was part of Kozeny's investment group, authorities said.
Pinkerton was put on administrative leave at AIG until the charges are resolved, the company said. He was managing director of AIG Global Investment and was in charge of AIG's private equity group, the indictment said.
AIG said the investment in question was brought to AIG Global Investment Group by a New York investment fund which put together a group investing $ 180 mm. That group, AIG said, included an AIG subsidiary which invested approximately $ 15 mm in 1998.
AIG said no assets of AIG clients were invested in the transaction and that AIG, realizing it had been defrauded by Kozeny, joined other investors in bringing lawsuits against him in the United States, the United Kingdom and the Bahamas. It said it was cooperating with the probe by federal prosecutors and noted that no charges were brought against AIG.
US Attorney Michael J. Garcia said hundredsof millions of dollars in bribes were promised and tens of millions of dollars were actually paid in the scheme that ran from August 1997 until about 1999.
"The case that we bring today involves nothing less than the brazen attempt to steal the wealth of a sovereign nation," he told.
Azerbaijan, rich in oil resources, began privatising some of its state-owned enterprises in the 1990s, Garcia said. Garcia said the defendants tried to bribe key decision makers and corrupt the privatisation process.
Kozeny sent planeloads of cash from Switzerland to Azerbaijan to buy vouchers to purchase shares in the State Oil Co., which held the country's oil and gas reserves and its oil and gas exploration, production and refining facilities, Garcia said. Garcia said Bourke and Pinkerton knowingly participated in the scheme, bribing top Azerbaijan officials with jewellery, shopping sprees and medical treatment to ensure the national oil company would be sold "and that they would get their unfair share."
Mark J. Mershon, assistant director in charge of the FBI's New York office, said Kozeny's plan was to acquire millions of dollars worth of options to buy stock in the oil company to gain a controlling interest so the options could be resold for 10 times their value.
"Kozeny foresaw such a windfall that he could promise corrupt Azerbaijan officials two thirds of his profits and still make a killing," Mershon said.
Kozeny never gained control of the oil company, he added.
Bourke and Pinkerton surrendered to the FBI in Manhattan while Kozeny was arrested in the Bahamas, where he was awaiting a court appearance. If convicted, the men face up to five years on each count of violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Bourke and Pinkerton each pleaded not guilty before Judge Richard Casey.
Barry H. Berke, Pinkerton's lawyer, said: "David Pinkerton has been wrongfully accused of being a criminal based on a passive investment that represents less than 1 % of the investment portfolio he managed."
Stanley A. Twardy Jr., a lawyer for Bourke, said: "We're looking forward to proving his case in court."
Benjamin Brafman, a lawyer for Kozeny, said the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act does not apply to him and he cannot be prosecuted for charges related to payments he allegedly made to foreign officials.
He said Kozeny has not decided whether to fight extradition.
Source: Associated Press
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http://www.financialcryptography.com/mt/archives/000425.html
Financial Cryptography
Where the crypto rubber meets the Road of Finance...
Advances in Financial Cryptography
April 01, 2005
AIG scandal - when it's ok for a company to commit a crime
An article "A top insurance company as the new Enron?" describes the post-Enron thinking in the world of biggest scandals. As the AIG scandal develops, the shift is away from the company and towards the individuals.
Considered alongside Sarbanes-Oxley, this signals more emasculation of the shareholder rights and responsibilities - now it's ok for a company to commit crimes as long as a) it is to big to fail and b) the fall guys are easy to identify.
A top insurance company as the new Enron?
An accounting probe at AIG worries Wall Street, and involves some of America's richest men.
By Ron Scherer | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
NEW YORK – American business is facing yet another major scandal involving more accounting shenanigans.
But, this scandal has the potential to cause tsunami-sized damage: It involves a highly respected insurance company, American International Group (AIG) - which is part of the Dow Jones Industrial Average - which has now admitted to $1.7 billion in improper accounting. And, it has enveloped some legends in the financial arena: Maurice "Hank" Greenberg, forced out as chairman of AIG, and Warren Buffet, the Omaha stock market guru, who will be questioned about his possible involvement.
Because AIG is so massive and important to the financial world, regulators will have to tread carefully. The company's main business is providing reinsurance, that is, it insures insurance companies. This helps the industry to spread its risk among many large and financially sound companies so a single event does not become a financial disaster for one company.
Also, because of AIG's huge size, lawyers don't think the government will bring a criminal charge against the company as it did for Arthur Andersen, Enron's accountant. The criminal charge was a death sentence for the accountant.
"There is an increased reluctance to bring criminal charges that ultimately have the effect of killing a company that otherwise employs a lot of innocent people and has lots of value to it," says Michael Gass, an expert on SEC enforcement at Palmer & Dodge, a Boston law firm. "Instead, there is an increased focus on the individuals responsible."
Past lessons
If the past is any indication of the future, the government will work its way up the food chain at the company. A host of executives, including the chief financial officer, have already resigned or been forced out. The government will try to pressure them to provide evidence against higher officials, particularly Mr. Greenberg.
"I would be shocked if nothing criminal comes out of this," says Mr. Gass. "The concept that there is a $1.7 billion fraud on the stock holders and not a criminal action is ridiculous."
Global investigation
The investigation is likely to also expand overseas. AIG has operations offshore, particularly in Bermuda where it has used a company to provide financial rewards for its executives. "It's common for insurance companies to use offshore companies and not be public about it," says Gass. "There is nothing illegal about it unless there is misuse."
So far, it's expected Mr. Buffet will be questioned as a possible witness, not necessarily a target. Buffet is chairman of a company called Berkshire Hathaway, which owns a company called General Re, which provides reinsurance. It agreed to a $500 million AIG deal that is now under scrutiny. Investigators are now trying to determine what Buffet knew and when he knew it.
"With the icon of integrity and master of morality even mentioned with AIG causes some people to ask, 'Is everyone now suspect?'" asks Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist at Standard & Poor's in New York.
The scandal links two of the world's richest men. According to Forbes Magazine, Buffet is the world's second-richest person with assets of $41 billion. Greenberg is ranked 132 in the world and 59th in the US with assets of $3.1 billion. Recently, two of Greenberg's sons, both executives in the insurance business, have also been tarnished by scandal.
Washington connections
Greenberg is well-known in Washington where he known for raising large amounts of money. Greenberg was one of the President Bush's "Rangers" which means he personally raked in more than $200,000 for the reelection campaign. At the same time, he is also known for his access to members of the cabinet and Congress. This access has paid-off as the administration has often supported Greenberg on a number of issues ranging from access to China to terrorism insurance.
However, Gass says the company's influence is not likely to extend to the investigation. "No one would take the political risk of terminating a criminal investigation assuming they have the power," he says.
Greenberg and AIG have further expanded their reach through the use of the $5 billion Starr Foundation, named after the founder of the company Cornelius Vander Starr. It supports influential groups such as the Council on Foreign Relations and the National Chamber Foundation, associated with the US Chamber of Commerce.
Before its legal troubles, AIG had begun an advertising campaign to become more well-known to Americans. Its most recent logo is "We know money." And, it brags it is the financial organization to choose for your "great-great-great-great-great grandchild." Now, lawyers expect it is likely to be fighting class-action lawsuits and irate regulators as it battles to survive.
Posted by iang at April 1, 2005 09:36 AM | TrackBack
Comments
Dear Sirs: My total retirement savings was invested in an AIG variable annuity. Three years ago (after earning 15%+ for ten years) I lost 40%. In the past three years I've earned almost nothing -- it's just sitting there -- I am retiring this summer and I'm so damaged I'm afraid to do anything.
The annuity was attractive because it was said to be profitable and would not require me to follow it closely. I actually believed that!
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/04/12/AR2005041200215_pf.html
AIG Scandal Could Hurt Official's Chance To Lead Fed
By Nell Henderson
Washington Post
Tuesday, April 12, 2005; E01
The scandal roiling insurance giant American International Group Inc. could weaken the chances of one of the company's prominent directors to succeed Alan Greenspan as Federal Reserve chairman, several economists and political observers have said in recent days.
AIG director Martin S. Feldstein, 65, president of the National Bureau of Economic Research and once the chief economic adviser to President Ronald Reagan, has been considered among the top three candidates for the Fed job, according to economists and political operatives on Wall Street and in Washington.
But AIG recently reported that it may have overstated its net worth by about $1.7 billion through a variety of questionable transactions. Its longtime chairman and chief executive, Maurice R. "Hank" Greenberg, was forced to give up those titles and is scheduled to give a deposition to investigators today.
Feldstein, an AIG director since 1988, serves on the board's finance committee but is not a member of the audit or compensation committees. He was among several of the company's outside directors whose institutions received donations from the Starr Foundation, a nonprofit organization controlled by Greenberg, The New York Times reported Sunday.
The NBER, which publishes working papers on economic topics, received more than $2.6 million during 2001 and 2002, according to AIG's latest proxy statement, filed nearly a year ago. The document said NBER did not intend to seek more money from the Starr Foundation.
Feldstein has not been implicated in the accounting problems, but his association with the company "could have some resonance" as President Bush and top White House officials evaluate the candidates for Fed chief, said Thomas Schlesinger, executive director of the Financial Markets Center, a nonprofit research institute that follows the Fed.
Feldstein's connection to AIG may be "relatively innocuous" by itself, Schlesinger said. But, he said, "the Bush administration has been very sensitive to corporate scandal and has put distance between itself and any whiff of corporate scandal."
Former FBI director William H. Webster, for example, had been chosen in 2002 to head the federal accounting oversight board created in the wake of the scandals at Enron Corp. and WorldCom Inc. But he withdrew his name from consideration after it became public that he had served as a director and head of the audit committee of U.S. Technologies Inc., a Washington manufacturer whose chief executive, C. Gregory Earls, was later convicted of defrauding investors.
U.S. Technologies ceased to exist as a publicly traded company as part of a settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The controversy also contributed to the resignation of Webster's sponsor for the accounting board job, Harvey L. Pitt, as chairman of the SEC.
Bush administration officials declined yesterday to comment on Feldstein's chances for Fed chief. "We don't comment or speculate on personnel matters," said Assistant Treasury Secretary Robert S. Nichols, adding that Treasury Secretary John W. Snow "holds Marty Feldstein in high regard."
Feldstein, through his NBER office, declined to comment on the AIG matter.
Greenspan, 79, has indicated that he plans to step down next January from the job he has held since 1987.
White House officials have indicated that they are in no hurry to name Greenspan's successor, both to avoid undermining his effectiveness and because they have many other economic positions to fill within the administration.
Karl Rove, Bush's deputy chief of staff, told Bloomberg News last week that it would be "a little premature" to announce Greenspan's replacement before the end of this year. But that hasn't stopped traders, analysts, investors and political observers from speculating about the choice. The administration started compiling names of possible candidates three years ago.
The list includes Feldstein, Columbia Business School Dean R. Glenn Hubbard, 46, and Fed board member Ben S. Bernanke, 51. All have stellar academic credentials and experience in national economic policymaking.
Hubbard served as chairman of Bush's Council of Economic Advisers from 2001 until February 2003, helped craft the administration's 2003 tax cut and has remained an administration adviser. Bernanke, former chairman of Princeton University's economics department, was appointed to the Fed by Bush in 2002, and has been chosen by Bush to become the next CEA chairman later this year.
The race is "hard to handicap," said William C. Dudley, chief economist at Goldman Sachs U.S. Economic Research Group.
Hubbard is closer to White House officials than the other two. Bernanke has more expertise on Fed policy. But Feldstein has greater seniority and stature in the economics profession.
Feldstein, who has taught at Harvard University for decades, served as Reagan's CEA chairman and is renowned for his pioneering research on how taxes affect business and consumer behavior. Because of that work, he is considered the father of "supply side" economics -- the idea that cutting taxes stimulates economic growth.
"Marty Feldstein is one of the giants of the economics business," Dudley said.
But Feldstein also has detractors among some White House allies who haven't forgiven him for criticizing the federal budget deficits that resulted in part from tax cuts during the Reagan administration.
"I just don't trust Marty Feldstein, and I think that's the view of most supply-siders like myself," said Steve Moore, president of the Free Enterprise Fund, a group that is lobbying for private Social Security accounts, Bush's top political priority this year.
Technically, the Fed is responsible primarily for setting interest rate policy and regulating banks. But Greenspan turned the job into that of national "economist-in-chief," influencing policy on taxes, deficits, entitlement programs, trade and other issues, Moore said. Therefore, he said, economic conservatives will expect any potential successor to share their positions on those issues.
When you add Feldstein's AIG connection to such political "considerations," Schlesinger said, "the folks making the decision might push a little farther down the list."
Staff researcher Richard Drezen contributed to this report.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Meet the CIA's Shrink
By Noah Shachtman http://blog.wired.com/defense/2009/03/cias-shrink.html
March 19, 2009
Meet Dr. David Charney, the Brooklyn-born, Virginia-based psychiatrist who's been treating the CIA's cloak-and-dagger set for nearly 20 years.
SpyTalk shares a fascinating St. Patrick's Day lunch with Charney, who breaks down the issues that various spooks face. For analysts in the Directorate of Intelligence, the problem is "obsessional," like fretting endlessly over whether a safe has been locked.
"They start leaving and they think, 'Did I actually close all the safes?' Then they go back and check the safes and spin the dials and leave. And then they say, 'Well, wait a minute -- the safe was closed in the first place, so maybe when I spun the dials I actually opened it.'
"In other words, they have obsessional worries. They might think, 'I have static electricity on my dress, and maybe a classified paper clung to my dress and I wasn't aware of it when I walked out, and it dropped off.' And then they'll go back and check their pathway."
Charney has interviewed the spies who've penetrated the American intelligence services, too -- guys like Robert Hansen and Earl Pitts, the FBI-turned-KGB agents. "A spy is one of the loneliest people in the world,"
Charney told Newsweek. "He is completely dependent on his handler."
Suffice it to say, my wife's practice in the Bronx is a wee bit different.
On a Bad Case of Cranial Bleeding, the Birth of CSC & the Collapse of Fannie Mae
By Alex Constantine
(Revised)
Last September, the corporate world was disheartened to learn of the brain hemorrhage death of prominent business consultant Michael Hammer while bicycling with a friend in Boston.
Hammer was one of the 25 "most influential" people in America, per Time magazine. A typical obit:
Hammer was revered by the business press, but his prescription for reengineering the corporation "had a dark side" - similar to the industrial contributions of Arthur Koestler - as the streamlining of processes often went hand in hand with reductions in jobs. "Often the term became jargon for mass layoffs. Mr. Hammer's rhetoric didn't help. 'It's basically taking an ax and a machine gun to your existing organization,' he said in a 1994 interview with Computerworld. He once told Forbes: "On this journey we'll carry our wounded and shoot the dissenters."
A fond farewell written by financial consultant Peter S. Cohan sheds light on the formation of Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC), the federal/military contractor that vies with Blackwater for the Most-Corrupt-Business-of-the-Year Award. Cohan, writing at Bloggingstocks.com:
Now my own brain felt as though it was bleeding. Thought I'd been reading about an intellectual who had revolutionized business management, albeit there was that "dark side." And now an even darker element entered the picture - CSC - and Index Systems. Sleaze.
This came personified in the form of Thomas P. Gerrity, the former dean and Joseph J. Aresty Professor of Management at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. Prior to Wharton, he was the Chairman and CEO of the Index Group, the CSC subsidiary that grew out of Cohan's MIT project. Gerrity earned his S.B. and S.M. in EE from MIT in 1963 and 1964 respectively, attended Oxford University, was a Rhodes Scholar and received his Ph.D. from the MIT Sloan School of Management in 1970.
Mr. Gerrity also served as a member of the Board of Directors of Fannie Mae Corporation from September 1991 to December 2006, and as the Chairman of the Audit Committee from January 1999 to May 2006. That's right, Fannie Mae - also in the news of late because the federal government is bailiing it out.
Mr. Thomas P. Gerrity, we note, from CSC/Index, chaired the AUDIT committee at Fannie Mae ... responsible for oversight. The mind reels ...
Ooh! - there's the cranial ache again - could it be that Michael Hammer was thinking about all of this when he keeled over on his bicycle, expired on the spot?
Did he think of Mr. Gerrity and his shameful departure from Fannie Mae two years ago, when he was forced out due to a very costly accounting scandal? The Washington Post reported:
The firm's accounting strategies smacked of Enron:
Gerrity had been perceived as a central participant in the Fannie Mae scandal for some time; so were other members of the board, and they are interesting in their own right:
Ultimately, federal charges against Gerrity etal. were dismissed. On August 1, 2007, the Washington Post reported:
Frederic V. Malek is of particular interest here - he was campaign manager of the Bush-Quayle campaign in 1992, and is only the deputy national finance chairman for John McCain’s current presidential campaign.
He's a Watergate holdover, a walking, talking conspiracy theory. "Malek," according to Medical World News, "was the son of a beer salesman in Berwyn, Illinois. He graduated from U.S. Military Academy in 1959. He served in Vietnam in the Special Forces, training South Vietnamese counterinsurgents. He left the Army in 1962 and married Marlene McArthur of San Francisco, and graduated from the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration, and went to work at the management consultant firm, McKinsey & Co. He and several other consultants had plans to start their own firm, but one was 'drafted by Robert McNamara to help out at Defense.' ..." (Is Health Planning Too Vital to be Left to MDs? Medical World News, Jul. 31, 1970, pp. 16-18.)
And there are his political bona fidés:
More connections place him snugly among the Nixonites: "Malek's boss at the Office of Management and Budget in Aug. 1973 was Roy L. Ash, for whom the Ash Council was named. The Ash Council created the Environmental Protection Agency. Until 1972, Ash was the president of Litton Industries, one of whose numerous divisions, Litton Bionetics, was in the second year of a $10 million-plus contract to manage, operate and maintain the National Cancer Institute's Frederick Cancer Research Center at Fort Detrick, Maryland. (FASEB Newsletter, 1973 Aug;6(6):2-3.)"
Watergate:
Frederic V. Malek, President GW Bush's bud, placed him on the board of directors of a company controlled by The Carlyle Group as a favor to his father.
The connections go on: Sen. Frank Lautenburg, NSA, 9/11 ...
Was the late Michael Hammer thinking about them when his life was ended prematurely by a brain hemorrhage? I will stop now to avert a possible repetition - I expect to live a long life, and the shock of political realization in America can be damaging to one's constitution.
(Revised)
Last September, the corporate world was disheartened to learn of the brain hemorrhage death of prominent business consultant Michael Hammer while bicycling with a friend in Boston. Hammer was one of the 25 "most influential" people in America, per Time magazine. A typical obit:
Michael Hammer (1948 - 2008)
Champion of 'Re-Engineering'
Saved Companies, Challenged Thinking
By CARI TUNA
September 6, 2008; Page A12
In the early 1990s, as personal computers, the Internet and cellphones began to transform the business landscape, Michael Hammer rose to prominence as the champion of the decade's trendiest management buzzword: "re-engineering."
Using new paradigms and technologies, companies were meant to redesign business processes from the ground up to meet goals faster and serve clients better.
Hammer and Company
Mr. Hammer, who died Thursday at age 60, gave the idea currency in an incendiary 1993 business best seller Reengineering the Corporation: A Manifesto for Business Revolution. The book sold over two million copies, stoking the growth of a multibillion-dollar re-engineering movement and catapulting Mr. Hammer to the forefront of management consultancy. In 1996, Time featured him on its first annual list of America's 25 most influential people, and Forbes in 2002 ranked "Reengineering the Corporation" the third most influential business book of the past two decades.
Hammer was revered by the business press, but his prescription for reengineering the corporation "had a dark side" - similar to the industrial contributions of Arthur Koestler - as the streamlining of processes often went hand in hand with reductions in jobs. "Often the term became jargon for mass layoffs. Mr. Hammer's rhetoric didn't help. 'It's basically taking an ax and a machine gun to your existing organization,' he said in a 1994 interview with Computerworld. He once told Forbes: "On this journey we'll carry our wounded and shoot the dissenters."
A fond farewell written by financial consultant Peter S. Cohan sheds light on the formation of Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC), the federal/military contractor that vies with Blackwater for the Most-Corrupt-Business-of-the-Year Award. Cohan, writing at Bloggingstocks.com:
"As it turns out, I have a professional connection to Hammer and his co-author, James A. Champy. Hammer taught me at MIT -- I took a course called Office Automation Systems from him in which he talked about the importance of imagining how a process would work if it could be re-imagined from scratch. And Champy hired me to work for the firm he co-founded with several MIT Sloan School professors -- Index Systems -- which grew dramatically after the Reengineering book was published. Index was ultimately acquired by Computer Sciences Corporation (NYSE: CSC)."
http://www.bloggingstocks.com/2008/09/05/reengineering-guru-dies/
Now my own brain felt as though it was bleeding. Thought I'd been reading about an intellectual who had revolutionized business management, albeit there was that "dark side." And now an even darker element entered the picture - CSC - and Index Systems. Sleaze.
This came personified in the form of Thomas P. Gerrity, the former dean and Joseph J. Aresty Professor of Management at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. Prior to Wharton, he was the Chairman and CEO of the Index Group, the CSC subsidiary that grew out of Cohan's MIT project. Gerrity earned his S.B. and S.M. in EE from MIT in 1963 and 1964 respectively, attended Oxford University, was a Rhodes Scholar and received his Ph.D. from the MIT Sloan School of Management in 1970.
Mr. Gerrity also served as a member of the Board of Directors of Fannie Mae Corporation from September 1991 to December 2006, and as the Chairman of the Audit Committee from January 1999 to May 2006. That's right, Fannie Mae - also in the news of late because the federal government is bailiing it out. Mr. Thomas P. Gerrity, we note, from CSC/Index, chaired the AUDIT committee at Fannie Mae ... responsible for oversight. The mind reels ...
Ooh! - there's the cranial ache again - could it be that Michael Hammer was thinking about all of this when he keeled over on his bicycle, expired on the spot?
Did he think of Mr. Gerrity and his shameful departure from Fannie Mae two years ago, when he was forced out due to a very costly accounting scandal? The Washington Post reported:
Fannie To Settle Charges, Pay Fine
Some $400 Million In Penalties Are Part of Agreement
By Kathleen Day and Annys Shin/WP
May 23, 2006; Page D01
Mortgage giant Fannie Mae will pay about $400 million in penalties under an agreement with two federal agencies to settle charges related to its $10.8 billion accounting scandal, sources said yesterday.
The settlement would end a nearly three-year investigation by the SEC and OFHEO into widespread accounting manipulation by the company -- including the use of improper accounting techniques to maximize bonus pay for top executives. It would not cover potential SEC action against individuals involved in Fannie Mae's problems, nor does it end a criminal investigation by the Justice Department.
But for the company, it could mark a step toward resolving a controversy that has undermined its credibility as well as its stock price and has fueled efforts in the White House and Congress for stricter regulation.
The firm's accounting strategies smacked of Enron:
The company's troubles were first made public in 2004 after a preliminary probe by OFHEO alleged that Fannie manipulated earnings between 1998 and 2004 to smooth the growth of profits it reported to investors. ... A separate probe, prepared for the Fannie Mae board by former senator Warren B. Rudman and released in February, concluded that the company manipulated earnings throughout the period under review and found that in one case it was done to maximize bonus payments.
Gerrity had been perceived as a central participant in the Fannie Mae scandal for some time; so were other members of the board, and they are interesting in their own right:
... Last week, Fannie Mae said it will replace Thomas P. Gerrity as head of its audit committee at the end of the year. Gerrity ... has been audit committee chairman for seven years. Since the scandal broke in 2004, corporate governance watchdogs have urged Fannie Mae to replace its audit committee, which is responsible for overseeing the company's accounting and financial practices and the performance of its outside auditor. Most of the committee has turned over in the past two years. Xerox chairman and chief executive Anne M. Mulcahy left in September 2004. Then Thayer Capital Partners' Frederic V. Malek retired from the board at the end of last year. Presidential appointees William R. Harvey and Taylor C. Segue III were not reappointed. ...
Ultimately, federal charges against Gerrity etal. were dismissed. On August 1, 2007, the Washington Post reported:
A federal judge yesterday dismissed civil securities fraud charges against some current and former members of Fannie Mae's board, saying that investors had not presented specific enough allegations for those elements of their lawsuits to go forward. The charges were part of a tangle of litigation stemming from a multibillion-dollar accounting scandal at the government-chartered mortgage funding company. People who served on Fannie Mae's board remain defendants in lawsuits alleging a different offense -- that they breached their duties. ... The dismissed securities fraud charges involved directors who were on Fannie Mae's audit committee, including Thomas P. Gerrity, a professor and former dean at the Wharton School; Frederic V. Malek, a Washington financier; and Anne M. Mulcahy, chairman and chief executive of Xerox. Institutional investors had alleged that members of the audit committee "failed miserably" in the performance of their duties. The allegations about the committee "do not demonstrate the required state of mind of extreme recklessness," wrote Judge Richard J. Leon of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Leon also dismissed charges against an insurance company, Radian Guaranty, which allegedly sold Fannie Mae a sham policy that helped Fannie Mae officers manipulate earnings. Radian "is merely a third party alleged to have provided Fannie Mae with the means to misrepresent its finances" and was not responsible for Fannie Mae's statements to investors, Leon wrote. http://securities.stanford.edu/news-archive/2007/20070801_Dismissal103806_Hilzenrath.html
Frederic V. Malek is of particular interest here - he was campaign manager of the Bush-Quayle campaign in 1992, and is only the deputy national finance chairman for John McCain’s current presidential campaign. He's a Watergate holdover, a walking, talking conspiracy theory. "Malek," according to Medical World News, "was the son of a beer salesman in Berwyn, Illinois. He graduated from U.S. Military Academy in 1959. He served in Vietnam in the Special Forces, training South Vietnamese counterinsurgents. He left the Army in 1962 and married Marlene McArthur of San Francisco, and graduated from the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration, and went to work at the management consultant firm, McKinsey & Co. He and several other consultants had plans to start their own firm, but one was 'drafted by Robert McNamara to help out at Defense.' ..." (Is Health Planning Too Vital to be Left to MDs? Medical World News, Jul. 31, 1970, pp. 16-18.)
And there are his political bona fidés:
Malek was Chairman of Triangle Corporation, Columbia, SC, from 1967-1969. From 1969 to 1970 he was Deputy Under Secretary of the US Department of Health, Education and Welfare; Special Assistant to Pres. Richard Nixon from 1970-73; Deputy Director of the Committee to Re-Elect the President ("CREEP") in 1972; Deputy Director of the Office of Management and Budget, 1973-74; Member of the White House Domestic Council, 1974-75; and in 1975, he left government and became Vice President of the Marriott Corporation.
More connections place him snugly among the Nixonites: "Malek's boss at the Office of Management and Budget in Aug. 1973 was Roy L. Ash, for whom the Ash Council was named. The Ash Council created the Environmental Protection Agency. Until 1972, Ash was the president of Litton Industries, one of whose numerous divisions, Litton Bionetics, was in the second year of a $10 million-plus contract to manage, operate and maintain the National Cancer Institute's Frederick Cancer Research Center at Fort Detrick, Maryland. (FASEB Newsletter, 1973 Aug;6(6):2-3.)"
Watergate:
"The Watergate scandal kept Nixon from fully carrying out his experiment in control, but his efforts were not forgotten. In fact, E. Pendleton James, who was in charge of Ronald Reagan's preinaugural talent search and then became assistant to the president for personnel, had worked under Fred Malek, Nixon's personnel chief. Malek was the author of the infamous 'Malek Manual,' a guide to political appointees, which emphasized a telling message: 'You cannot achieve management, policy or program control unless you have established political control.' ...Malek then went on to describe techniques designed to 'skirt around the adverse action proceedings' required to proceed against civil servants in a legal manner. All were designed 'to remove undesireable employees from their positions.'" (The President and the Executive Branch, by Joel D. Aberbach. UCLA Center for American Politics and Public Policy Occasional Paper Series 9 1-9.) William H. Taft IV was also a member of the Reagan transition team. (White House Transition Team. Washington Post, Feb. 18, 1980.)
Frederic V. Malek, President GW Bush's bud, placed him on the board of directors of a company controlled by The Carlyle Group as a favor to his father.
The connections go on: Sen. Frank Lautenburg, NSA, 9/11 ...
Was the late Michael Hammer thinking about them when his life was ended prematurely by a brain hemorrhage? I will stop now to avert a possible repetition - I expect to live a long life, and the shock of political realization in America can be damaging to one's constitution.
AIG Chief didn't Always Defend Sanctity of Contracts
"He's always disregarded contracts to maximize profits. ... "
by Rebecca Mowbray
The Times-Picayune
March 18, 2009
To many on the Gulf Coast, watching AIG Chief Executive Officer Edward Liddy talk about the sanctity of contracts in defending the award of $220 million in bonuses to employees at the embattled insurer was an ironic moment.
"How about that?" said Bob Hunter, a New Orleans native who is director of insurance at the Consumer Federation of America and author of a 2007 study documenting the decline of claims payout ratios at Allstate, Louisiana's second-largest insurer, during Liddy's tenure. "He's always disregarded contracts to maximize profits." ...
Liddy ran Allstate Corp. from when it was spun off from Sears, Roebuck & Co. in 1995 until the end of 2006. During that time, Allstate perfected the practice of getting tough with policyholders to delay and deny claims, as documented in the book by New Mexico attorney David Berardinelli, "From Good Hands to Boxing Gloves."
While that book dealt mainly with a strategy for tamping down car insurance claim payouts to increase profitability, many believe those same practices could be seen at work en masse after Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana, where thousands of policyholders filed suit against the Illinois company.
"It's rather ironic that Ed Liddy is espousing the sanctity of contracts when it serves the interests of the insurance company, but when the sanctity of contracts is violated from the homeowners' perspective, there's no obligation and it's up to the homeowners or the courts to enforce it, " said Johnny Denenea, an attorney for Slidell homeowners Bob and Merryl Weiss, who won a verdict against Allstate in the first insurance trial to be completed in federal court after Hurricane Katrina.
Evidence emerged after Hurricane Katrina that Allstate shifted the burden of paying for wind damage covered by its homeowners policies onto taxpayers by overcharging the federal flood program.
Slidell resident Chris Karpells, noticed at his townhouse, for example, that Allstate systematically charged the government more money to replace common construction materials than what it billed itself. Allstate charged the government $3.31 a square foot to replace wallboard at Karpells' townhouse, but only 76 cents a square foot when the company would be paying for it.
"Bilking American taxpayers is what insurance companies do. Why is anyone surprised?!" Rep. Gene Taylor, D-Miss., said in a news release Wednesday afternoon about the AIG bonuses. The release also called on Congress to investigate how much of the flood program's $17 billion deficit after Katrina was caused by overbilling by insurers.
Dropped coverage
Under Liddy's tenure, Allstate also was among several companies to retreat from providing homeowners insurance coverage in coastal states after Hurricane Katrina, saying the risks were too great for shareholders. This left many policyholders few options other than state-run pools to provide bare-bones coverage.
In Louisiana, the company was particularly aggressive. In July 2006, it announced that it wanted to drop wind and hail coverage on 30,000 policyholders in South Louisiana, even though many were covered by a state law that says a company can't arbitrarily drop coverage once a policyholder has had an insurance contract with them for three years. Although that number eventually was whittled down to 18,000 because of the state law, the insurance department again had to do battle with Allstate when it began dropping wind and hail coverage against longtime customers in late 2007 who received new policies without their knowledge when they accepted offers for good-credit discounts in 2006. That resulted in a $250,000 penalty, the largest fine ever issued by the Louisiana Department of Insurance.
In the interim, Allstate dropped 4,772 policyholders for having unrepaired or unoccupied properties in a controversial drive-by inspection process that took about a minute per home in late 2006. When many homeowners protested that they were in the house or had repaired it, the insurance department forced the company to reinstate them in spring 2007.
But Louisiana Insurance Commissioner Jim Donelon said it's unfair to tag these issues as examples of Allstate violating contracts with policyholders under Liddy's tenure. He views them as Allstate having different interpretations of state law than the insurance department.
"That issue wasn't about their contracts; it was about our law that applied to those contracts, " Donelon said.
Hunter thinks otherwise. "If they were managing their business right, they wouldn't have entered into contract with those people along the coast and then dumped them, " he said. "You expect that if you're in good hands, the company will keep you."
http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2009/03/aig_chief_didnt_always_defend.html
by Rebecca Mowbray
The Times-Picayune
March 18, 2009
To many on the Gulf Coast, watching AIG Chief Executive Officer Edward Liddy talk about the sanctity of contracts in defending the award of $220 million in bonuses to employees at the embattled insurer was an ironic moment.
"How about that?" said Bob Hunter, a New Orleans native who is director of insurance at the Consumer Federation of America and author of a 2007 study documenting the decline of claims payout ratios at Allstate, Louisiana's second-largest insurer, during Liddy's tenure. "He's always disregarded contracts to maximize profits." ...
Liddy ran Allstate Corp. from when it was spun off from Sears, Roebuck & Co. in 1995 until the end of 2006. During that time, Allstate perfected the practice of getting tough with policyholders to delay and deny claims, as documented in the book by New Mexico attorney David Berardinelli, "From Good Hands to Boxing Gloves."
While that book dealt mainly with a strategy for tamping down car insurance claim payouts to increase profitability, many believe those same practices could be seen at work en masse after Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana, where thousands of policyholders filed suit against the Illinois company.
"It's rather ironic that Ed Liddy is espousing the sanctity of contracts when it serves the interests of the insurance company, but when the sanctity of contracts is violated from the homeowners' perspective, there's no obligation and it's up to the homeowners or the courts to enforce it, " said Johnny Denenea, an attorney for Slidell homeowners Bob and Merryl Weiss, who won a verdict against Allstate in the first insurance trial to be completed in federal court after Hurricane Katrina.
Evidence emerged after Hurricane Katrina that Allstate shifted the burden of paying for wind damage covered by its homeowners policies onto taxpayers by overcharging the federal flood program.
Slidell resident Chris Karpells, noticed at his townhouse, for example, that Allstate systematically charged the government more money to replace common construction materials than what it billed itself. Allstate charged the government $3.31 a square foot to replace wallboard at Karpells' townhouse, but only 76 cents a square foot when the company would be paying for it.
"Bilking American taxpayers is what insurance companies do. Why is anyone surprised?!" Rep. Gene Taylor, D-Miss., said in a news release Wednesday afternoon about the AIG bonuses. The release also called on Congress to investigate how much of the flood program's $17 billion deficit after Katrina was caused by overbilling by insurers.
Dropped coverage
Under Liddy's tenure, Allstate also was among several companies to retreat from providing homeowners insurance coverage in coastal states after Hurricane Katrina, saying the risks were too great for shareholders. This left many policyholders few options other than state-run pools to provide bare-bones coverage.
In Louisiana, the company was particularly aggressive. In July 2006, it announced that it wanted to drop wind and hail coverage on 30,000 policyholders in South Louisiana, even though many were covered by a state law that says a company can't arbitrarily drop coverage once a policyholder has had an insurance contract with them for three years. Although that number eventually was whittled down to 18,000 because of the state law, the insurance department again had to do battle with Allstate when it began dropping wind and hail coverage against longtime customers in late 2007 who received new policies without their knowledge when they accepted offers for good-credit discounts in 2006. That resulted in a $250,000 penalty, the largest fine ever issued by the Louisiana Department of Insurance.
In the interim, Allstate dropped 4,772 policyholders for having unrepaired or unoccupied properties in a controversial drive-by inspection process that took about a minute per home in late 2006. When many homeowners protested that they were in the house or had repaired it, the insurance department forced the company to reinstate them in spring 2007.
But Louisiana Insurance Commissioner Jim Donelon said it's unfair to tag these issues as examples of Allstate violating contracts with policyholders under Liddy's tenure. He views them as Allstate having different interpretations of state law than the insurance department.
"That issue wasn't about their contracts; it was about our law that applied to those contracts, " Donelon said.
Hunter thinks otherwise. "If they were managing their business right, they wouldn't have entered into contract with those people along the coast and then dumped them, " he said. "You expect that if you're in good hands, the company will keep you."
http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2009/03/aig_chief_didnt_always_defend.html