But I have my suspicions... Consider the following:
1) Iran/Contra got a lot of people in trouble, including a number in this crowd for trying to conceal funding of Contras through getting money from Iran in underhanded ways... Lesson learned from this? Don't try to get creative in this way to fund your black ops...
2) Some very high profile corruption cases involving the CIA and money launderers that intersected each other...
- Dusty Foggo was the highest ranking official in the CIA who was put in prison over bribery connections with Randy Duke Cunningham, and his longtime friend and money launderer Brent Wilkes... Foggo also worked with John Negroponte in Honduras, and Negroponte in addition to being head of Homeland Security, was a part of the Iran/Contra mess as well earlier:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E01E7DF133EF930A25757C0A9639C8B63 - Brent Wilkes got off with kid gloves for "money laundering", but still is in prison now for it, and was working internationally doing so in places like Panama.
- interesting speculation of him being tied to Iran/Contra on DU earlier back in 2005, and mysterious suicide of Gary Webb, San Jose Mercury News reporter who was investigating CIA involvement in cocaine smuggling.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x5582027 http://aangirfan.blogspot.com/2005/12/cia-wilkes-cunningham-abramoff-cocaine.html http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0512/S00080.htm - Thomas Kontogiannis, was another money launderer who was put in prison for his ties to these scandals.
- another money launderer tied to these guys had some unprecedented secrecy surrounding his trials and appeals...
http://thenexthurrah.typepad.com/the_next_hurrah/2007/06/kontogiannis-se.html http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/metro/20080308-9999-1m8sealed.html - Kontogiannis was also treated with 'kid gloves' treatment during his trial, including a trip to Greece that the appellate judge didn't know about after he was convicted and awaiting sentencing on some undisclosed 'government biz'. Dusty Foggo asked his judge for a similar trip before sentencing and didn't get approval to do so in his trial.
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/004205.php http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/06/indicted_cia_spook_kyle_dusty.php - Other entities to look at tied to this mess;
- Randy Duke Cunningham - now in prison.
- Mitchell Wade - now in prison for bribery, etc.
- Porter Goss - tied to the Watergate "Hookergate" gambling/sex scandals that also had the above people involved in them that had him resigning from the CIA.
- John T. Michael - Thomas Kontogiannis's nephew also linked in to above scandals and pleaded guilty to money laundering.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/politics/20080205-9999-1m5michael.html3) Carol Lam, who prosecuted and convicted Duke Cunningham earlier, indicted Brent Wilkes, John T. Michael, and Dusty Foggo before leaving office when she was one of the U.S. Attorneys that were fired in the attorney scandal, and arguably her firing was the one that started to bring that controversy out in the open.
- She was also hired quickly by Qualcomm for one of their highest legal staff positions, before Democrats like Rahm Emmanuel could work on getting her hired back on a contract basis to finish up her investigations/prosecutions in these areas. Coincidentally also (or perhaps not), Brent Scowcroft (who's an instrumental part of both AIPAC and ATC lobbyist groups) is on the board at Qualcomm.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/politics/20070208-9999-7m8lam.html http://cannonfire.blogspot.com/2007/02/true-cost-of-hookergate.html http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/Stock/QCOM/insiders 4) The secrecy and coverup of the Cunningham and related cases was really bipartisan in nature as evidenced by the quashing of Duke Cunningham matter by the House Intelligence Committee. Why were the Democrats also covering up what arguably was a heavily a set of Republican criminal activities?
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/003686.php5) North Korea has been attributed with the being the source of the many "super dollar" counterfeit U.S. currency bills that were too good to be caught easily, and forced us to update our currency. However, mainstream news sources like Germany's
Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, and the U.S.'s
McClatchy DC News bureau have claimed that the quality of these counterfeits were too good to have been minted by the North Koreans, and that a more likely source of the counterfeited money was a CIA operation that used that money to fund black operations.
http://www.nowpublic.com/german_paper_reports_cia_counterfeiting_us_currency http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/24521.html http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/46471/is_the_cia_counterfeiting_dollars_and_blaming_it_on_north_korea/When you put all of these different news items together, you have to ask yourself "HMMM!!!"... And if this operation that the CIA is lying to congress about is this operation, and if you have even Democrats covering it up earlier, along with Cheney being directly involved in it, ask yourself what would happen to our country's economy and the value of the dollar if it were found out that Cheney and the CIA had put together a U.S. counterfeit money and laundering operation to fund black ops that they didn't want to get tracked like Iran/Contra was in its day, with many of the same people involved with the earlier Iran/Contra operations involved! I think overnight our dollar would lose HEAVILY. Which might explain why the Dems perhaps might be complicit in a coverup of something like this.