Rep. Waters releases documents in ethics defense that could weaken case against her

[bigtree]

Associated Press
08/15/10

___ "I have not violated any House rules," the senior member of the House Financial Services Committee told a news conference that included a power-point presentation of the documents.

Among the documents released by Rep. Waters:

_A Sept. 6, 2008 National Bankers Association letter to Treasury Secretary Paulson that set Waters' intervention in motion. It expressed concern that minority banks could suffer major losses from a government takeover of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, because banks invested in the two failing companies. It turned out that OneUnited was the only association member severely hurt by that investment, but Waters said she wasn't aware of that when she called Paulson on Sept. 8 on the association's behalf.

_Several other association e-mails, news releases and a letter around the time of the Treasury-trade association meeting on Sept. 9, indicating this was an association issue.

_Testimony to the House ethics committee from an official of the bank-regulating Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., Sandra Thompson. She said that despite problems with OneUnited's operations, she recommended to her superiors that OneUnited be placed on a track that would permit OneUnited to get assistance.

_An Internal Treasury Department e-mail showing the head of the bailout program for financial institutions, Neel Kashkari, said the meeting set up by Waters played no role in the later decision to give OneUnited $12 million. In fact, the so-called Troubled Asset Relief Program hadn't even been established at the time of the meeting. "We didn't even know about it," Kashkari said, referring to the Treasury-minority association meeting.

_Numerous e-mails between Financial Services Committee staff members showing that Frank and his staff was dealing with Treasury in support of OneUnited. Those e-mails did not mention Waters.


read more: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/breaking/rep-waters-releases-documents-in-ethics-defense-that-could-weaken-case-against-her-100718674.html

[Booster]

1. I sincerely hope she embarrasses the Hell out of the Repugs.

If she wanted to, I'll bet she has a couple of unethical things she could bring up about each and everyone of the idiots that are accussing her now.

[bigtree]

2. I hope folks really take a look at this farce of a case

[EFerrari]

8. When you read the referral from the ethics Office

they make great hay out of the fact that these banking people kept emailing her chief of staff.

But they don't point out that he kept trying to refer them to other people.

This.is.bullshit.

[Ramulux]

3. Shes obviously innocent

Anyone whos paid any attention to what the charges are against her and what she has said in her defense knows that this is completely politically motivated.

I am more interested in whether the press will actually make that fact known or if they will just brush over it. I really dont see how they could not reach the obvious conclusion that these ethics committee members are abusing their power for political gain, especially once she is cleared of all charges.

[The Backlash Cometh]

4. Good for her.

I had a hunch this was a different case than the others.

[EFerrari]

5. They have nothing on Maxine. This is HARRASSMENT.

F#ck Porter Goss. Somebody should do an expose of his corrupt career and ask why there's a felon co-chairing the effing Office of House ETHICS.

[suffragette]

7. That's exactly what it is

Part of that is personal (Maxine has been out-spoken about Goss's corruption) and part of that is that she is one of the few in Congress actively advocating for minority banks.

This fits into the Acorn and Sherrod pattern.

Found an interesting interview at NPR from 2008, which shows how during the TARP bailout of banks, minority banks were "underrepresented with respect to receiving TARP capitals."

Minority Banks See Clients Through Tough Times
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=98325149
December 16, 2008

Although the federal government is pouring billions of dollars into the nation's banks, minority-owned financial institutions serving African-American and Latino communities face their own unique challenges, such as higher unemployment rates and less access to credit.
~~~

MARTIN: Have many minority banks gotten any of this bailout money?

Mr. CUNNINGHAM: Well, there have been some minority-owned banks that have received money from TARP, the capital purchase program. We've listed on our blog this week, in social responsible investing, the banks that have. About one percent of the $156 billion has gone to minority-owned banks. Now, when you break that out, African-American banks have been underrepresented with respect to receiving TARP capitals. Matter of fact, only one African-American, Broadway Savings and Loan in Los Angeles, has received capital from the Treasury. They received about nine million. So, nine million out of $700 billion in funding...

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. CUNNINGHAM: Has gone to African-American institutions. Now, there are a couple of Asian institutions, East West Bank in California, a Hispanic institution, Banco Popular in Puerto Rico, which recently got 900 million. So, again, it's been about one percent of the funds that have gone to minority institutions. We think that's low, especially given the track record that these institutions have in reaching out and serving the community in a responsible manner.

[EFerrari]

10. Thank you for this story.

The other day, I was watching documentary about Haiti and noticed that when those hearings were going on, in the middle of the second Aristide ousting, the only two critters to even try to crack down on the vultures were WATERS and RANGEL.

[glitch]

11. What a coinkydink.

Maxine Waters also played a big part in publicizing the CIA-Cocaine conspiracy in LA that Gary Webb lost his career over (and his life IMO), even though the CIA confessed to it.

So she's effective, black and a woman. Taking her out would be a trifecta for them.

edit: I hope Robert Parry stays all over this.

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2010/080210.html

[EFerrari]

14. Holy cr@p

[suffragette]

19. Spot on glitch

[EFerrari]

22. Waters calls on Reno, CIA and Congress for investigation (96)

Published: Sept. 4, 1996

BY GARY WEBB AND PAMELA KRAMER
Mercury News Staff Writers
In the widest-ranging call yet for an official investigation, South Central Los Angeles Congresswoman Maxine Waters is requesting both federal and Congressional probes of the role U.S. goverment agencies may have played in sparking the crack cocaine explosion of the 1980s.

Waters, a Democrat, sent out a series of letters Friday to U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno, Central Intelligence Agency Director John Deutch and Republican and Democratic Congressional leaders citing the findings of a recent Mercury News investigation into the roots of the crack epidemic. The series, Dark Alliance, documented how a Bay Area drug network dumped thousands of kilos of cheap cocaine into L.A.'s black neighborhoods in the 1980s to fund a Latin American guerrilla army that was being run by the CIA.

''As someone who has seen how the crack cocaine trade has devastated the South-Central Los Angeles community, I cannot exaggerate my feelings of dismay that my own government may have played a part in the origins and history of this problem,'' Waters wrote. ''Portions of this country may have been exposed, indeed introduced, to the horror of crack cocaine because certain U.S.-government paid or organized operatives smuggled, transported and sold it to American citizens.''

Mark Mansfield, a spokesman for the CIA, said Deutch ''is in the process of responding to these inquiries and (a written response) will be completed soon.'' Mansfield reiterated the CIA's belief that any suggestion that the spy agency was involved in drug trafficking was ''ludicrous'' and without merit.

http://www.narconews.com/darkalliance/drugs/scrip905.htm

Holy cr@p, holy cr@p. Maxine Waters went up against the Iran/Contra felons.

[suffragette]

24. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence hearing on March 16, 1998

Surprise hearings in House Intelligence Committee Backfire on CIA

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ciadrugs/news1.html


Committee Chairman, Porter Goss, (R), FL, himself retired from C.I.A., announced that the hearing was prompted in part by the imminent retirement of Hitz who is scheduled to teach at Princeton. Hitz was charged in 1996 by then CIA Director John Deutch with thoroughly investigating charges that CIA had been involved in cocaine trafficking to support Contra rebels in the 1980s. As the hearing unfolded it became apparent that what started out to be a fete for the departing Hitz was going to be a major embarrassment for the Agency. The suddenness of the hearing precluded coverage by any electronic media organizations other than C-SPAN, which covered the hearing from gavel to gavel.

Other members such as Nancy Pelosi, (D), Ca, whose bay area district has demonstrated a long and deep felt concern over the issue and Norman Dicks (D), WA. who is the ranking member of the Committee were far more open in their skepticism. The bay area of California was the focal point of one 1983 aspect of the investigation known as the Frogman case, which turned up direct links to C.I.A. after a massive cocaine seizure. Dicks represents an area north of Seattle which has felt a dramatic and painful incursion of L.A. based street gangs in recent years. All members of the Committee who spoke, including California gubernatorial candidate Jane Harman, (D) Torrance; Ike Skelton, (D) Mo.; David Skaggs (D), Co.; and Jim Gibbons (R), Nev., were clear in their statements that Congressional examination of C.I.A. involvement in drug dealing was far from over.

~~~

Having arrived with an aide, several large stacks of documents, photographs, charts and former San Jose Mercury News reporter Gary Webb in tow Maxine Waters testified next and turned a ten minute allotment from the Chairman into a thirty plus minute evisceration of the C.I.A. report. "I am here to talk about the failure of the C.I.A. to conduct a serious and thorough investigation into allegations of C.I.A. drug trafficking," she said in her opening sentence.

"The Inspector General's report lacks credibility. It is fraught," she continued, "with contradictions and illogical conclusions. The report's sweeping denial of the CIA's knowledge of drug trafficking defies the evidence and the logic that the CIA should have known." Waters continued on a point by point basis to refute Hitz's own conclusions in the report and his methodology by using both evidence which CIA had included in the report and which she had produced during her own investigations. She criticized the Agency for not interviewing key witnesses and for not disclosing the names of the people they had interviewed. She listed meetings and relationships, which the Agency had previously documented, to show concrete relationships between CIA assets and drug traffickers. In a particularly angry portion of her statement she referred to the 1986-7 Senate hearings Chaired by John Kerry and the eleven hundred page report which clearly documented CIA's ties to drug traffickers.


ETA: Cspan video link of this: http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/102219-1
Haven't watched it yet, but will soon.

[EFerrari]

25. Goss has been obstructing the investigation of Iran Contra

ever since he was a commissioner of Lee County (1985), which was a landing pad for drug planes. Oh, and he and Death Squads Negroponte were at Yale together, graduated '60.

But to your point, I just read that that IG, Hitz resigned. When Goss finally called the hearing Maxine was calling for, it was CLOSED and she was not present.

[suffragette]

28. Looks like he couldn't keep her out the 1st time and made sure

that would happen the next time.

Didn't realize the Negroponte connection, but boy does that add it up with places Goss has been and the little we know about that he has done.

[EFerrari]

29. For me, the best evidence that IranContra mainstreamed

is that Goss is where he is. And that Negroponte was Director of National Intelligence (under the torture president) with the power to issue SEC waivers. Just before the crash, too. Nice.

[malaise]

13. Ding ding

what's more seniority is preventing some of the ambitious upstarts from controlling committees.

[EFerrari]

16. The long knives are out for Charlie.

But even with the minor stuff he probably did, it's not clear that they will win. He has a lot of power and he knows where all the bodies are.


/oops

[suffragette]

18. Maxine questioned Goss's actions and nomination in Haiti back in 2004

http://www.haitiaction.net/News/MW/9_20_4.html

Didn't know that about Rangel. Tha adds some important perspective on this.

[EFerrari]

21. Is it just me or is Maxine saying Goss is too dirty to head up

the CIA?

So, this could be retribution.

Great catch, suffragette.

[suffragette]

23. Yes, that's how I read it

And it wasn't the only time they tussled.

[G_j]

12. good find, clearly

fingerprints all over this

[suffragette]

20. Here's more good info from 2009

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=8870637&mesg_id=8891462

[EFerrari]

27. Goss was a spokesliar for the IRI:

"• As the spokesman for an International Republican Institute delegation of election monitors to Haiti in 1995, Goss tried to discredit the parliamentary victory of pro-Aristide candidates that far more credible foreign observers than himself had validated. "


from:

Recently confirmed Porter Goss is still the wrong man for the job as evidenced by his Haitian involvement
by Jenna Liut --- Council on Hemispheric Affairs

http://www.thepanamanews.com/pn/v_10/issue_19/Opinion_05.htm

[pleah]

6. K&R

[greeneyedboy]

9. the more you know about this, the less "there" is there n/t

[Pavulon]

15. Every thief in the crew list should be gone. Especially

those in secure districts who can elect people who will not use tax money to secure their financial positions..

[EFerrari]

17. If we had a brain, we'd have an email writing thread in support of Maxine

cc a copy to our own reps. She went to a lot of trouble to put out more information on Friday. We could show people that we are paying attention and expect her to be treated fairly.

Who knows if it would help but it might.

[spanone]

26. funny, the cable chatter hasn't uttered a word on this

really not funny at all