Big Love: Romney, Bush & The Mormons

[Octafish]

Gee. Like my television screen, my noosepaper must've missed this story:

Big Love: Romney, Bush & The Mormons

Opinion: Suzan Mazur
Scoop.co.nz
Monday, 10 April 2006, 2:16 pm

EXCERPT...

As we know, the Mormons helped to push Bush II into the Oval Office through campaigning, cash and the legal savvy of Latter-day Saint Timothy Flannigan (the father of 14 children), who organized the Bush v. Gore argument and was rewarded with a White House counsel appointment.

While Mitt's mother may have been an MGM film actress, Mitt's Y chromosome comes from his father, the late Michigan governor George W. Romney, who was born and raised in the Colonia Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico polygamy colony between the New Mexico and Texas borders. (One account cites his birthplace as nearby Colonia Dublan.) Ancestry of Mitt Romney

At the moment it looks all uphill for Romney in a bid for the White House precisely because of his ties to the Mormon Church and its scriptural embrace of polygamy, not to mention the Church's system of unaccountable tithing. Ten percent of each Saint's annual income (no questions about where it comes from) goes to the LDS treasury to remain a fully active member. This pool of money has enabled Mormons as a group to gain an economic edge in this country with few noticing. Romney's tithes to the LDS treasury as a result of his years in investment banking would have to be cumulatively substantial.

For an excellent read about how the Mormon money works see Sally Denton and Roger Morris: The Money and the Power: The Making of Las Vegas and Its Hold on America:

". . .as a handful of insiders knew, a special private plane began leaving Las Vegas every Monday morning for Salt Lake City, carrying to the LDS headquarters millions of dollars earned and tithed in the city."
There are also Romney's ties to the LDS chuch school, Brigham Young University, though the Romney Institute established in his father's name.

And then there is the question: Will Romney pledge to cut LDS deadwood from America's intelligence community? The Mormon church's connection to the FBI and CIA are by now notorious. J. Edgar Hoover started the FBI with Mormon agents because they could keep a secret not because they could necessarily get the job done.

CONTINUED...

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0604/S00117.htm

Gosh. There is more to Mitt than meets the wallet.

[Angry Dragon]

1. The Mormon church is a business

[Octafish]

2. Besides petroleum, what's the biggest business around?

Suzan Mazur asks the questions Chuck Todd and rest of the Media Horses are afraid to ask:

LDS Church -- Mexico Drug Money Connection?

Opinion: Suzan Mazur
Scoop.co.nz
Tuesday, 15 May 2007, 11:29 am

EXCERPT...

Who are Mexico's LDS members? A seeming cross-section of Mexican culture -- merchants, restaurant workers, shippers, farmers, security personnel, bankers, government officials, etc.

But with the Mexican economy awash in drug money, how can narco-dollars not be a significant part of LDS Church Mexico tithes?

We also know that the Mormon Church has a long history of feeding personnel to the US intel agencies, the CIA and FBI – J. Edgar Hoover started the Bureau with Mormon agents. Alex Shoumatoff in his book, for example, recounts running into Bill Casey in the VIP gallery of the Mormon Church in Salt Lake City one afternoon. That means there is a good chance monies pouring into church coffers could also be black budget earmarked:

“One afternoon in the summer of 1983, I sat in the VIP gallery [of Salt Lake City’s LDS church] with two fidgety men in their thirties and an old man, who turned out to be William Casey, then director of the CIA, and his Secret Service guards. The Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation recruit heavily from the Saints, who make ideal operatives because they are extremely patriotic and have an aptitude for surveillance technology.”

And as I’ve noted in previous stories, when Robert Mueller took over as FBI Bureau Chief, he moved Darwin A. John -- the LDS church’s Chief Information Officer for more than a decade -- into the FBI CIO spot.

CONTINUED...

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0705/S00311.htm

Rather than a corpse of pressstitutes, wouldn't it be great if we had a bunch more reporters like Ms. Mazur?

[Max100]

3. Mormons and operatives....

A good way to find out more about the Mormon faith, as well as the fundamentalist offshoot that practices polygamy, is to read the new mystery, Prey for Zion, by E.D.MacDavey. It's available from Amazon on Kindle Books. It's a riot to read, now 13th on the Kindle Humor list. It's also very timely, because it's about a Mormon politician running for office. It's set in Zion National Park.

This book elaborates on an idea in this thread, that Mormons have a history as operatives in the CIA and elswehere.... They put a very high value on loyalty and discipline.

If the fundamentalist, polygamist Mormons could place a lot of people into government and agencies like the CIA as operatives, that raises some very interesting possibilities... as outlined in Prey for Zion.

[Octafish]

5. Mitt Romney and the CIA's Mormon hiring preference....

Thank you for the heads-up on Prey for Zion. This is a subject of interest to DUers:

Mitt Romney and the CIA's Mormon hiring preference....

Which reminded me of the Pentagon White House spy ring thing, one Yeoman Charles Radford, fall guy and Mormon:

The Men Who Spied on Nixon: New Details Reveal Extent of 'Moorer-Radford Affair'

By James Rosen
Published December 15, 2008
FoxNews.com

A Navy stenographer assigned to the National Security Council during the Nixon administration "stole documents from just about every individual that he came into contact with on the NSC," according to newly declassified White House documents.

The two-dozen pages of memoranda, transcripts and notes -- once among the most sensitive and privileged documents in the Executive Branch -- shed important new details on a unique crisis in American history: when investigators working for President Richard Nixon discovered that [font color="red"]the Joint Chiefs of Staff, using the stenographer as their agent, actively spied on the civilian command during the Vietnam War.[/font color]

The episode became known as "the Moorer-Radford affair," after the chairman of the Joint Chiefs at the time, the late Admiral Thomas H. Moorer, and the stenographer involved, Navy Yeoman Charles Radford. The details first surfaced in early 1974 as part of the Watergate revelations, but remained obscure until historians in the 1990s and this decade began fleshing out the episode.

The affair represented an important instance in which President Nixon, who resigned in 1974 amid wide-ranging allegations that he and his subordinates abused the powers of the presidency, was himself the victim of internal espionage. In adding to what has already become known about the episode, the latest documents show how the president and his aides struggled to "get a handle on" the young Navy man at the center of the intrigue and contain the damage caused by the scandal.

SNIP...

He encouraged Ehrlichman to mention to Admiral Robinson that the young stenographer-spy had already told investigators that he believed the material he had been stealing was destined to go to "your superiors," meaning the Joint Chiefs. Young also urged Ehrlichman to determine the extent to which Kissinger's top NSC deputy -- Alexander Haig, who had personally selected Radford to accompany Kissinger on his overseas trips, and who later went on to become secretary of state in the Reagan administration -- was "aware of Radford's activities."

CONTINUED...

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2008/12/15/men-spied-nixon-new-details-reveal-extent-moorer-radford-affair/

PS: A hearty welcome to DU, Max100! Howard Hughes and the Mormon Mafia were Big Time players.

[Overseas]

4. K&R. I hope TV reporters ask more questions about Mitt's Mormon Church.

[Octafish]

6. There is a lot to ask about. For instance: ''Missionaries and the CIA''

A bit of history that's really news...

Missionaries and the CIA

The Washington Star for July 23, 1975, reported the following:

Almost from its inception in 1947, the CIA has used religious groups both as a source of information and as a conduit for funds. CIA spokesmen declined to discuss the CIA-church connection in any detail . . .

Sources said the CIA dealt with religious groups in Latin America, Africa, Asia and elsewhere.

A spokesman for the Senate select intelligence committee said the panel's staff is investigating complaints that the CIA has had improper dealings with missionaries.

In the Salt Lake City Messenger for Jan. 1975, we suggested that the Mormon Church could provide a perfect cover for the CIA agents:

Since the Mullen Company [the firm which handled the Mormon Church's public relations] was used as a cover for the CIA, a question concerning the involvement of the Mormon Church with the CIA naturally arises . . .

The Mormon Church's world-wide activities and mission program could provide a perfect cover for CIA agents, but at the present time we have no evidence that this is actually the case. We do know, however, that the Church provides many men for the CIA. Writing in the New York Times for September 16, 1974, Wallace Turner states: "Many Mormon scholars work on contracts for the C.I.A." We recently asked a man who had taught at Brigham Young University if he had any reason to believe that the Mormon missionary program is used as a cover for CIA agents. He replied that he did not, but he went on to state that many missionaries are later recruited to CIA work. He felt that the missionary program provided good training for CIA agents. The missionaries are taught absolute obedience to authority and many of them learn foreign languages as well.

On Feb. 22, 1975, an employee of the CIA sent us a letter in which he stated:

Thank you for your current "Messenger." As usual it is very informative.

I am currently employed with the Central Intelligence Agency and can attest to the fact that the Agency has been very fruitful in hiring Mormons, especially former missionaries.

In my section they are four . . .

I'm sorry I do not have any vital information other than what I just told you. I would appreciate it if you would keep the above information in your confidence as to not using my name. I do not feel that I have given you any secret information but people can sometimes make something out of nothing.

CONTINUED...

http://www.utlm.org/newsletters/no38.htm

About 8 years ago, a neighbor of mine and his family were "volunteered" by his local ultra-right wing church to become missionaries in Nigeria, stationed in Jos, smack in the middle of the Muslim-Christian power struggle, basically a civil war for control of oil revenues. Their reverend got props from his bishop for the number of volunteers he could find. Gosh, this sounds like a familiar refrain to people on DU, not news at all to my religious neighbors.

[Overseas]

7. Didn't realize it was so widespread.

[Zorra]

8. knr