-Caveat Lector- <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/"> </A> -Cui Bono?- from: http://msnhomepages.talkcity.com/ReportersAlley/thecatbirdseat/Catbird2.htm Click Here: <A HREF="http://msnhomepages.talkcity.com/ReportersAlley/thecatbirdseat/Catbird2. htm">THE CATBIRD SEAT</A> ----- >From No One Left to Lie To: . . . The late Les Aspin, Clinton's luckless and incompetent secretary of defense, once told me that he had planned to make a brief personal appearance in Sarajevo, in order to keep some small part of the empty campaign promise made by Clinton to the Bosnians, but had been ordered to stay at home lest attention be distracted from "Hillary's health-care drive." To this day, many people believe that the insurance companies torpedoed a worthwhile if somewhat complex plan. In numerous self-pitying accounts, the First Lady and her underlings have spoken with feeling on the point. Perhaps you remember the highly successful "Harry and Louise" TV slots, where a painfully average couple pondered looming threats to their choice of family physician. As Mrs. Clinton put it in a fighting speech in the fall of 1993: "I know you/ve all seen the ads. You know, the kind of homey kitchen ads where you've got the couple sitting there talking about how the President's plan is going to take away choice and the President's plan is going to narrow options, and then that sort of heartfelt sigh by that woman at the end, "There must be a better way" -- you know, you've seen that, right? What you don't get told in the ad is that it is paid for by insurance companies. It is time for you and for every American to stand up and say to the insurance industry; "Enough is enough, we want our health-care system back!" . . . It is fortunate for the Clintons that this populist appeal was unsuccessful. Had the masses risen up against the insurance companies, they would have discovered that the four largest of them -- Aetna, Prudential, Met Life, and Cigna -- had helped finance and design the "managed-competition" scheme which the Clintons and their Jackson Hole Group had put forward in the first place. . . . Dr. David Himmelstein, one of the leaders of the group, met Mrs. Clinton in early 1993. It became clear, in the course of their conversation, that she wanted two things simultaneously: the insurance giants "on board," and the option of attacking said giants if things went wrong.. . . . The "triangulation" went like this. Harry and Louise sob-story ads were paid for by the Health Insurance Association of America (HIAA), a group made up of the smaller insurance providers. The major five insurance corporations spent even more money to support "managed competition" and to buy up HMOs as the likeliest investment for the future. The Clintons demagogically campaigned against the "insurance industry," while backing -- and with the backing of -- those large fish that were preparing to swallow the minnows. This strategy, invisible to the media . . . was neatly summarized by Patrick Woodall of Ralph Nader's Public Citizen: "The managed competition-style plan the Clintons have chosen virtually guarantees that the five largest health-insurance companies -- Aetna, Prudential, Met Life, Cigna, and The Travelers -- will run the show in the health-care system." . . . And Robert Dreyfuss of Physicians for a National Health Program added: "The Clintons are getting away with murder by portraying themselves as opponents of the insurance industry. It's only the small fry that oppose their plan. Under any managed-competition scheme, the small ones will be pushed out of the market very quickly." . . . Having come up with a plan that embodied the worst of bureaucracy and the worst of "free enterprise," and having seen it fail abjectly because of its abysmal and labyrinthine complexity, the Clintons dropped the subject of health care for good. . . . Since they had been gambling with other peoples' chips, the First Couple felt little pain. . . . The same could not be said for the general population, or for the medical profession, which was swiftly annexed by huge HMO's like Columbia Sunrise. Gag rules for doctors, the insistence on no-choice allocation of primary "care givers," and actual bonuses paid to physicians and nurses and emergency rooms that denied care, or even restricted access to new treatments, soon followed. So did the exposure of extraordinary levels of corruption in the new health-care conglomerates. Until the impeachment crisis broke, no comment was made by the administration about any of these phenomena, which left most patients and most doctors measurably worse off than they had been in 1992. Howard Clark - See Xerox Corporation and American Express Co . Jeff Stone - Jeffrey W. Greenberg - From Business Wire - 11/18/99 - The Board of Directors of Marsh & McLennan Companies (MMC) today elected Jeffrey W. Greenberg CEO of the company. Mr. Greenberg who continues as president of MMC, succeeds A.J.C. Smith, age 65, who will remain chairman of the board until he retires from the company at its 2000 annual meeting. Mr. Smith will continue as a member of the company's board. . . . Mr. Greenberg, age 48, was elected president of MMC in January 1999, at the same time his planned succession to the CEO position was announced. . . . Mr. Greenberg began his professional career in 1976 at MMC, where he managed the commercial aviation/aerospace insurance group. He then worked for 17 years at American International Group . . . He rejoined MMC in 1995 and was named chairman and chief executive officer of Marsh & McLennan Capital in 1996. . . See: Marsh & McLennan Companies; American International Group Jerry D. Choate - CEO of Allstate Corp. In 1998, Choate was in good hands with over $3.1 million in salary, bonus and other compensation. And he was handed over another $5 million in stock option grants, for a total of over $8.1 million. See also: Allstate Corp. John R. Petty - See Marine Midland Bank. John Waihee - Ex-Governor of Hawaii (D). A Friend Of Bill. See Kamehameha Schools/ Bishop Estate. Larry L. Landry - Lawrence Summers - Leo Emil Wanta - Click on "Who is Leo Wanta?" link back on The Catbird's Home Page. Lokelani Lindsey - From Equity No. 2048 - Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law - Petition For Removal of Trustee Marion Mae Lokelani Lindsey: . . . In 1996, Xerox Corp. paid for Trustee Lindsey and her husband's airfare, lodging, and food to attend the Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia. . . . At the time, Xerox was a Kamehameha Schools/Bishop Estate vendor. See: The Honolulu Star Bulletin link on the Catbird's Home Page: Kamehameha Schools Bishop Estate Archives. Mark McConoghy - The tax expert from PricewaterhouseCoopers who is the principal tax adviser for Kamehameha Schools Bishop Estate and its subsidiaries on matters of tax law. McConoghy was a co-investor with KSBE in the McKenzie deal, which had the appearance of, if not actual, conflict of interest. McConoghy also may have personally benefitted in other KSBE deals, including one or more of the HAK partnerships, and the Benson Forest purchase. . . See: PricewaterhouseCoopers. Marshall N. Carter - CEO of State Street Corp. In 1998, Carter scooped up over $8.7 million in salary, bonus and other compensation from State Street Corp. Shovel in another $5.8 million in stock option grants and that's a total of over $14.5 million. And Carter has over $13.3 million in unexercised stock options from previous years. Maurice R. Greenberg - CEO of American International Group (AIG). In 1998, Greenberg bulldozed in an amazing $21.47 MILLION in salary, bonus and other compensation from AIG. No, I did not misplace the decimal point. That's $21.47 MILLION !!! Plus, of course, you can add in over $5.48 million more in stock option grants for a total of over $26.95 million. Yes, that's over $26.9 MILLION . . . in one year !!! But hold on, Greenberg has accumulated over $63 .3 MILLION in unexercised stock options from previous years. See also: American International Group; Coral Reinsurance (to see where some of that money came from). Milton Holt - Holt was a KSBE employee and former legislator. From: Equity No. 2048, Petition of the Attorney General on Behalf of the Trust Beneficiaries to Remove and Surcharge Trustees: "Milton Holt is a friend of Peters and served with him in the Hawaii Legislature. Holt has been an employee of the Trust since 1987, first as assistant athletic director and more recently as a special projects officer. . . . Holt has been paid as a full time employee. He has not worked full time for the Trust. . . . From 1992 until early 1998, Holt repeatedly used a credit card issued to the Trust for charges at Honolulu adult entertainment nightclubs and to obtain cash advances at Nevada casinos. . . . Peters and Wong were informed by senior Trust executives of the improper nature of the charges and of the difficulties in obtaining repayment from Holt. . . . Peters and Wong concealed from the other Trustees Holt's personal charges on the Trust credit card and rejected suggestions to confiscate the card. In 1994, the Trust gave Holt a retroactive pay raise of $12,325. The retroactive pay raise was not related to the value of Holt's services for the Trust but, rather, was calculated to pay off the improper expenses charged by Holt. . . . The Trust did not timely pay employment taxes on the retroactive salary increase to Holt." See: The Honolulu Star Bulletin link on the Catbird's Home Page: Kamehameha Schools Bishop Estate Archives. Mochtar Riady - A senior executive for the Riady family's Indonesian enterprise, Lippo Group. A billionaire, Mochtar Riady was an invited guest at Clinton"s inauguration and his son, James was on the "economic summit" convened after Clinton's election. Mochtar Riady has close ties with the military junta that has killed hundreds of thousands in East Timor. When Clinton visited Indonesia in November 1994, he met with Mochtar Riady and John Huang. A point at issue here is not only the illegal foreign contributions to a presidential election, but also the close economic and social ties to an enterprise vying to market East Timor goods in America by a group that uses genocide and slave labor to compete in the global market. See: Lippo Group; Timor (in Part III). Nathan Aipa - From RICO lawsuit: Harmon v. Federal Insurance Co, et al: Nathan Aipa, is General Counsel and Principal Executive in charge of the Legal Group, KSBE, and Assistant Secretary/Assistant Treasurer, P&C. Plaintiff was an employee in the Legal Group under Aipa's supervision. Gilbert Ishikawa, Tax Manager, also reported directly to Aipa. Plaintiff alleges that Aipa's wrongful acts. . . include: * Facilitating the Trustees' intentional disregard of federal and state laws and regulations, such as the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Environmental Protection Act, the Occupational Safety and Health Act, the Equal Employment Opportunity Act, the Family Emergency Leave Act, and the "Interim Sanctions" regulations of the Internal Revenue Service. . . * Facilitating and concealing the Trustees' use of Estate assets in mergers and acquisitions of businesses and properties without performing proper due diligence . . . * Facilitating and concealing co-investments in KSBE deals by the Trustees, employees, family members and business associates. According to newspaper reports, in 1989 the four KSBE Trustees, Peters, Takabuki, Richardson and Thompson approved of the investment of approximately $85 million in a Houston-based energy venture with McKenzie Methane. . . . This same venture also received more than $3 million in personal funds from all four trustees and employees and business associates of the estate. . . . The Honolulu Advertiser reported in their February 26, 1995 issue that: "The troubled deal may cost the estate as much as $65 million in lost capital and at least twice that much in lost earnings and tax benefits. . . Honolulu businessman Desmond Byrne. . . called the personal investments by estate trustees and staffers 'an absolutely improper conflict of interest. It raises the appearance that their official decisions are affected by their own personal financial interests'. . . The current board is almost completely different from that of 1989. Only one trustee, Henry Peters, remains. But the current board still holds that the old one did nothing wrong, according to Aipa. 'There was no conflict of interest,' (Nathan) Aipa said. . . . The Texas court files clearly show, however, that the trustees, their employees and associates relied on estate reports and financial data when they decided to put their own money in the deal. Estate personnel have immediate access to the high-priced and sophisticated financial expertise of such firms as First Boston Bank and Goldman, Sachs & Co. The estate, a non-profit, tax-exempt institution . . . must be very careful in structuring its investment activities so it won't imperil its tax-exempt status. The Houston investment was particularly tricky because one of the principal benefits was that the estate would receive federal energy tax credits, which the tax-exempt estate intended to sell." Nathan Aipa was promoted to acting Chief Operations Officer of KSBE when the interim trustees replaced the ousted former trustees. On January 7, 2000, the estate announced the appointment of Hamilton McCubbin, who becomes the first CEO in the estate's 115-year history on February 1, 2000. The estate also announced that Nathan Aipa would remain the estate's COO. Omar Bongo - See Citigroup Paul A. Allaire - CEO of Xerox Corp. In 1998, Paul Allaire raked in over $5.9 million in salary, bonus and other compensation from Xerox. Add in over $7 million in stock option grants and Alliare's take for the year was over $13 million. And Mr. Alliare has over $78 million in unexercised stock options from previous years. Paul J. Silvester - Former Connecticut State Treasurer. From Three Plead Guilty In Corruption Case, by Jon Lender and Mark Pazniokas, The Hartford Courier (ctnow.com), 09/24/99: . . . Former state Treasurer Paul J. Silvester pleaded guilty in federal court Thursday to charges of racketeering and conspiring to launder money -- and, in a deal to cut his jail time, agreed to cooperate as the investigation targets well-connected political figures from Connecticut to Washington, D.C. . . . His brother, New York real estate investor Mark Silvester, 50, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to solicit and accept corrupt payments. Brother-in-law Peter D. Hirschi, 43, of West Hartford, a lawyer, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to launder money. . . . They, like the 37-year-old ex-treasurer, have been talking to federal prosecutors for a month and have promised to continue cooperating -- including possible testimony against others. . . . Documents released Thursday detailed kickbacks from so-called finder's fees totaling more than $3 30,000, but there may be significantly more money involved in activities still under investigation. . . . "We are looking at both other individuals and organizations," U.S. Attorney Stephen C. Robinson said Thursday after the pleas were entered. His office worked with the FBI and IRS in the probe of the West Hartford Republican's 17-month tenure as state treasurer. . . . Although Robinson declined to give specifics about where the probe will go, court documents indicated that prosecutors are looking closely at Wayne Berman, a prominent Washington, D.C. business consultant who is a major fund-raiser for Republican presidential front-runner George W. Bush. . . . Sources in recent days have said Berman received more than $900,000 from a fee or fees by virtue of Silvester's placement of tens of millions of dollars with an investment fund of the internationally known Carlyle Group. See also: The Crossroads Group; Bigler Investment Management; Charles M. Harmon; Goldman Sachs; MacArthur Foundation; Adele Smith Simmons; Marsh & McLennan; Orion Capital Partners, LP Philip J. Purcell - CEO of Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co. In 1998, Philip J. Purcell raked in over $13.3 million in salary, bonus and other compensation from his company. Add another $17.7 million in stock option grants for Mr. Purcell and you have $31 million and some chump-change. And in case he's ever a little short for cigarette money, he has over $40.4 million in unexercised stock options from previous years. Prescott Bush, Jr. - From the web posting by Tripod.com: . . . There is another yakuza incident that hits closer to home. West Tsusho, a Tokyo-based real estate firm, bought two American companies with help from none other than Prescott Bush, Jr., President Bush's elder brother. . . What wasn't known at the time was that West Tsusho is an arm of a company run by the Inagawa-kai's leader, Ishii Susumu. . . . Tsusho purchased Quantum Access, a Houston-based software firm, and Asset Management International Financing & Settlement, a New York City-based company. . . . Bush received a $250,000 finder's fee for Asset Management, and was promised another $250,000 per year for three years in consulting fees. . . . Randy Stone - Richard Rainwater - From People Profiles, www.pathfinder.com: . . . [Rainwater] grew up in Fort Worth . . . and ended up at Stanford Business School along with Sid Bass...an heir to the Bass oil fortune. After graduation, Rainwater took a job at Goldman Sachs, then went work for the Bass family as a financial advisor, growing their $50 million of assets into a $5 billion fortune. . . . In the 1980's, Rainwater went out on his own and built up positions in real estate, oil and gas, and health care -- most famously Columbia/HCA, recently the subject of federal investigations. Along the way, Rainwater was one of the owners (with Texas Gov. George W. Bush, among others) who bought and sold the Texas Rangers baseball team; he's still a part owner of the Dallas Mavericks. He also purchased Canyon Ranch. . . . >From the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 09/03/97, by Rick Daysog: . . . Four years ago, Bishop Estate invested $30 million in Mid Ocean Reinsurance Co. with partners J. P. Morgan & Co., Marsh & McLennan Co., and Texas deal maker Richar d Rainwater. The estate's 5.36 percent in the Bermuda-based reinsurance company, which went public in late 1993, today is worth about $106 million. . . . >From George W. Bush, Jr. - The Dark Side, by Real People For Real Change: . . . Corruption in Texas Government; State $ to Big Contributors -- Bush's administration has been marked by the large amounts of state controlled money flowing to men who have either contributed large amounts to Bush's campaign, or who have made Junior personally rich through sweet insider business deals, or both. . . . Another key player in the Bush world is Richard Rainwater, the billionaire Texas investor who made Bush Jr.'s original involvement in the Texas Rangers deal possible. That's the deal that made Jr. rich, of course. Bush had several other personal investments in Rainwater controlled companies. But Rainwater has received much from Bush and the state of Texas' treasury, too. . . . For example, the state teacher retirement fund sold three office buildings to Rainwater's real estate company at bargain prices, and without bids in 2 of the cases. The fund invested $90 million in the Frost Bank Plaza in Austin, and sold it to Rainwater's Crescent Real Estate for $35 million. Bush signed a law that will give his former baseball team co-owners -- including Rainwater -- a $10 million bonus payment when a new Dallas arena is built. Bush also proposed a cap on business real estate taxes that would have saved Rainwater millions on his various properties (but it lost in the legislature). And UTIMCO, described above, has invested $20 million in Rainwater companies. . . . Bush may or may not have violated state ethics laws with all of this big money backscratching, but there is no doubt that he and these businessmen are operating corruptly -- funneling large amounts of state money to the businessmen's companies, and large amounts of their personal and business money into George Bush Jr.'s pocket and political campaigns. . . . Robert M. Beck - A director of Prudential Life Insurance Company. See: Xerox Corporation. Robert Rubin - Former co-chairman of Goldman Sachs, former U.S. Treasury Secretary; current co-chairman of Citigroup. >From The Buying of the President: . . . With the pressing need to maintain the trust and confidence of Wall Street, a significant force in the new education of Bill Clinton in late 1992 and early 1993 was Robert Rubin, a man worth an estimated $100 million who resigned as co-chairman of Goldman Sachs to join the Clinton administration. Rubin and his wife made a $275,000 contribution from their personal foundation to the New York Host Committee to the Democratic National Convention. Goldman Sachs helped to fund the Clinton campaign for the presidency, with its officers contributing more than $100,000 in so-called "bundled" money. "Bundled" is the term applied to the aggregate contributions of multiple employees of a single company. . . . Rubin, Goldman Sachs, and the Clinton crowd go way back. Rubin has known longtime friend and White House counselor Mack McLarty for a decade, and in the late 1980s, Goldman Sachs helped to underwrite $400 million in bonds for the Arkansas Development Finance Authority (ADFA). >From http://www.dacor.net: Buh-bye, Rubin! posted May 12, 1999: The forced resignation of disgraced Clinton Treasury secretary Robert Rubin may have been a result of imminent further exposure of a vast array of corrupt activities, from Treasury's attempted coercion of U.S. Secret Service agents to lie during their Filegate testimony in 1996, and the agents' criminal prosecution as a result of that testimony, to today's New York Times story "CH INA SENT CASH TO U.S. BANK, WITH SUSPICIONS SLOW TO RISE." . . . Treasury was looking the other way and suppressing reports by its Comptroller of the Currency (which regulates national banks) unit as the Central Bank of Communist China illegally moved tens of millions of dollars into a California bank for illegal political and intelligence purposes. . . . However, the final straw that broke Rubin's back could well have been a brilliant investigative journalism article by the USA TODAY's Tom Lowry on May 3, 1999, "Trust Scandal Haunts Goldman/Sullied Bishop Estate owns 10% of Bank/Highly Paid Trustees Facing Accusations, Charges." . . . Mr. Lowry exhaustively details the utterly corrupt activities of Hawaii's giant Bishop Estate in general, and a highly suspect transaction between the Bishop Estate and the personal financial account of Robert Rubin in particular. Rubin is also a former chairman of Goldman Sachs and whose Treasury department regulates both the Bishop Estate and Goldman Sachs, with full awareness of his massive conflicts involving his personal investments, the Treasury department, the Internal Revenue Service, Goldman Sachs, and the Bishop Estate. . . . Mr. Lowry wrote: . . . Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, who was Goldman Sach's chairman when the firm first approached the estate about an investment, disclosed several years ago that he entered into a business agreement with the estate. He pays the trust more that $100,000 a year, and in return, the estate guarantees that when Rubin leaves government office, the value of his partnership stake in Goldman will not be any less than when he joined the Clinton administration in 1993. . . . Randall Roth, a University of Hawaii law professor who sparked the state's review of the estate with a 1997 essay in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, says the investment just "looks terrible for Go ldman Sachs with this monstrosity of a charity with these huge problems." . . . After the publication of Mr. Lowry's USA Today article, I phoned Clinton Treasury department spokesman Howard Schloss, and my call was taken by a spokeswoman. I asked if Mr. Rubin or Treasury had issued any public statement in response to the charges leveled against Rubin by the USA Today article, and I was told no such statement had been made, other than to say that there would be no comment. I pressed the spokeswoman for the actual terms, the written instrument of the highly suspect put warrant contracts between the Bis hop Estate and Rubin, and I was told they were not available. . . . I then began to contact conservative political leaders around the country, and had compiled a list of about 20 leaders of the Congressional majority, conservative media, and conservative investigative entities and foundations. I sent a number of pages of documents on the matter (including the 05/03/99 Lowry USA Today . . . to only approximately seven of them, including my making a presentation in person, with documentation, to a powerful conservative member of Congress in Chicago Monday night, May 10. Two days later, Rubin has resigned. I was only just getting warmed up! . . . I commented in my 05/05/99 FreeRepublic article that: ". . . Clinton apologist and treasury secretary Rubin is entangled in a tortured web of conflicts of interest among his secretary of the treasury office, his giant financial transaction with the Bishop Estate, his huge investment in Goldman Sachs, and his oversight of the IRS, including its supervision of the Bishop Estate. Both Chairman Jim Leach of the U.S. House Banking Committee and Chairman Phil Gramm of the U.S. Senate Banking Committee should open investigations and hold hearings on the matter. Their Committees should subpoena Rubin and compel him to testify about his personal dealings retarding the Bishop Estate, his involvement with Goldman Sachs' transactions with Bishop, and his supervision of the Internal Revenue Service's handling of its Bishop Estate tax status investigation." . . . June 12, 1995: Labor Secretary Robert Reich and some congressional Democrats, reacting to Republican demands for welfare and Medicare reform, call for more scrutiny of "corporate welfare." There sincerity will be tested in the next few weeks with a classic case of corporate shenanigans - if not out-and-out malfeasance - in the business world. Ironically, it involves the largest charity in the country and a growing scandal that could involve Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and cost the Democratic Party its 50-year hold on the 50th state, Hawaii. . . . Rubin already is besieged by lawmakers who want to know more about his role in the Mexico bailout, a $20 billion deal that royally benefitted his former investment bank, Goldman, Sachs & Co. Rubin was a principal partner at the time Goldman, Sachs invested in Mexico, underwriting billions of dollars worth of bonds and other financial instruments. Of the $5.2 billion already expended to bolster the Mexican economy, a reputed $4 billion was used to pay New York-based firms for their losses. . . . Recently, however, another intriguing facet of the Mexico deal surfaced. Upon joining the Clinton administration, Rubin sought to protect both his investments and his ethics by establishing a blind trust with Hawaii's Bishop Estate, an asset-rich charitable organization. Under the agreement, Rubin pays the Bishop Estate an estimated several hundred thousand dollars, whereupon the Estate promises to cover any losses to Rubin's multimillion-dollar interest in Goldman, Sachs. While Rubin was co-chairman of Goldman Sachs, the Bishop Estate invested $250 million in Goldman, Sachs, about half of its total investment in the firm. . . . The Honolulu Advertiser values the Bishop Estate assets at a whopping $10 billion, 337,000 acres of land in Hawaii, the premier property under the Royal Hawaiian and Sheraton hotels in Waikiki, and part of the Robert Trent Jones Golf Club outside Washington, where President Clinton plays. The Bishop Estate, the wealthiest charitable organization in the country, enjoys close connections to the Democratic power elite in Hawaii and long has been a source of public controversy. Estate trustees are appointed by the Democratic-controlled state Supreme Court and are paid as much as $925,000 a year in commissions, testing an IRS prohibition against excessive personal benefit for nonprofit executives. . . . While the estate was set up for the sole benefit of Hawaiian schoolchildren and now enjoys an endowment larger than Harvard and Yale's combined, it often is faulted for educating only 3,000 full-time students. According to the April 25 Wall Street Journal, only one-third of the Estate's $244 million fiscal 1993 earnings went toward education, while the trust, thanks to its Democratic friends in Congress, has drawn $30 million in federal subsidies for native Hawaiians since 1987. . . . The Advertiser reported that four Estate trustees made personal investments of $4 million in a Houston-based energy project in which the Estate had invested some $85 million, despite having told state-appointed trust overseers that they had not undertaken any transactions with family member, business associates or employees of the Estate . . . Rep. Spencer Bachus, an Alabama Republican and chairman of the House Banking subcommittee on General Oversight and Investigations, has said that if necessary, he would subpoena Rubin about his ties to the Bishop Estate and Goldman, Sachs. Fueling congress ional suspicion is the estate's withholding of a financial statement on the specious claim that its dissemination could lead to "competitive disadvantage and loss to the estate." The statement in question covers July 1, 1992 to June 30, 1993, the same period during which the estate was investing hundreds of millions in Goldman, Sachs. The estate, by law, must disclose its financial records annually with the state Probate Court. Why should a tax-exempt charity arrogantly refuse to divulge information to the public, information that is critical to the state's certification that the estate is being run properly as a charitable trust? . . . At the very least, the House Banking Committee should compel the release of the requisite financial records of America's richest nonprofit and examine the propriety of the Treasury Secretary's insurance deal with the estate and his involvement in protecting Goldman, Sachs against heavy losses in Mexico. . . . See also: Goldman Sachs; Bishop Estate; Citigroup Rodney Park - Controller for Bishop Estate at the time of the estate's $85 million investment in McKenzie Methane. Park was also a co-investor in the deal. Presently, Park heads Bishop Estate's Administration Group, which oversees the Controller Division, Information Services Division and Personnel Division. He was appointed president of the estate's for-profit captive insurance company, P&C Insurance Company, Inc., replacing the previous president, Bobby Harmon, who was fired as the estate's risk manager and P&C's president in November, 1996. According to an Associated Press article in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, Harmon claims he was fired because he refused to follow directives of Trustee Henry Peters and General Counsel, Nathan Aipa, to have P&C pay Marsh & McLennan, the estate's insurance broker and captive manager, a $200,000 annual flat fee for performing minimal services without a contract and no explanation for the charges. >From Equity No. 2048, Petition of the Attorney General on Behalf of the Trust Beneficiaries to Remove and Surcharge Trustees: . . . Since 1996, the Trustees' compensation has also been limited by federal law, specifically the Intermediate Sanctions provision of the Internal Revenue Code (IRC) 4958. . . Between November 1993 and May 1994 the Trust incurred investment losses of over $45 million, which would have reduced each Trustee's compensation by more than $225,000. . . Rather than reduce compensation, retroactive adjustment were made in June and July 1994 to generate commissions on FDOC amounting to more than $98,000 to each Trustee. The retroactive adjustments were made at the direction of Peters, general counsel Nathan Aipa, and the principal executive of the administration group, Rodney Park. Roger Altman - From The Buying of the President: . . . Roger Altman resigned his position as Deputy Treasury Secretary in August 1994. The resignation followed in the wake of his testimony before the Senate Banking Committee's Whitewater panel about his role in disclosing information to the White House of the RTC's investigation of Madison Guaranty. During a heated House Banking subcommittee hearing on June 19, 1995, Altman denied a close relationship with the institution he directed. "I did not run the RTC on a day-to-day basis." . . . But he paid enough attention to make at lease one significant decision. Thomas Burnside, a former RTC counsel wrote, "The RTC's lapses became most pronounced when Roger Altman, the deputy secretary of the treasury, ran the agency from April 1993 until March 1994. Within a month of taking control, he reversed the RTC's longstanding request to Congress to extend the federal statute of limitation on investigating S&L wrongdoing [and prosecuting S&L operators]. He said that the RTC no longer needed any extensions." The RTC was set to close up shop on December 31, 1995, a year before it was originally mandated to do so. . . . The relevant point here is that several Wall Street firms have benefitted during the Clinton years. . . . Sanford Weill - CEO of the Citigroup, Inc. In 1998, Sanford Weill shoveled in over $10.5 million in salary, bonus and other compensation from Citigroup. Bulldoze in another $41.6 million in stock option grants awarded to Mr. Weill, and you get a total of over $52 million. (That's right, over $52 MILLION !) But he has only around $4.7 million in unexercised stock options from previous years. (He exercised some.) >From Executive PayWatch: Too Close for Comfort. The board of directors of a company is responsible for determining executive compensation packages. To protect shareholders, corporate directors or boards' compensation committees are supposed to be "independent" of management. But according to the Investor Responsibility Research Center, nearly 150 companies in 1997 had affiliations compromising their independence from the company or the CEO. . . . Take Citigroup CEO Sanford Weill for example: Last year, he took home more than $52 million in total compensation and exercised another $156 MILLION in "reloading" stock options. Noting that Weill's total return to shareholders in 1998 was negative 9 percent and that he had presided over massive layoffs costing thousands of workers their jobs, executive expert Graef Crystal said, "Sandy Weill is the ultimate in bad company when it comes to compensation excess." . . . If Weill's pay is not justified by his performance, could he be getting by with a little help from his friends? Weill shares the top job at Citigroup with co-CEO John Reed, who has a board interlock with Citigroup compensation committee director Robert Shapiro. Shapiro is the CEO of Monsanto , an investment banking client of Citigroup. . . . Unfortunately for shareholders, such conflicts of interest rarely get much scrutiny until something goes horribly wrong. This year, using data from the Investor Responsibility Research Center, Executive PayWatch exposes S&P 500 directors on compensation committees that are "too close for comfort" to the CEO's they supposedly oversee. (Cases of the fox guarding the henhouse?) See also: Robert Ruben; A. J. C. Smith; Marsh & McLennan; Citigroup. Scott R. Whitney - Sr.VP/CEO of Bedford Property Investors, Inc. from July, 1997. Previously, he was the Sr.VP/CEO of WCI Communities since 1995. Before WCI, he was with the Equity Group Investments from 1994. Prior to joining Equity Group, he worked with Balcor/American Express. - See WCI Communities; MacArthur Foundation; American Express; Bishop Estate Shailesh J. Mehta - CEO of Providian Financial Corp. In 1998, Shailesh shoveled in more than $6.5 million in salary, bonus and other compensation. Add in, if your calculator goes up this high, over $14.8 million in stock option grants for a total of over $$21.3 million. And, Shailesh has over $142 million in unexercised stock options from previous years. Sol Linowitz - From Conspirators' Hierarchy: . . . Others on the board of Xerox are . . . Sol Linowitz, who negotiated the Panama Canal Treaties for the Committee. Linowitz is important to the Committee by virtue of his long standing expertise in laundering drug money through Marine Midland and the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank. . . . See Xerox Corporation Stephen A. Wynn - CEO of Mirage Resorts, Inc. In 1998, Wynn raked in $3.8 million in salary, bonus and other compensation from Mirage Resorts. Add in another $12.1 million in stock option grants, that's a total of $15.9 million. Plus, Mr. Wynn also has $108.1 million in unexercised stock options from previous years. Sukarman Sia - Indonesian multi-millionaire businessman (before declaring bankruptcy) arising, from among other things, millions in gambling debts to Las Vegas casinos which he allegedly paid with a rubber check. Sia, formerly known as Sukarman Sukamto, also owned a major share of Bank of Honolulu and Th e Executive Centre building in Honolulu, Hawaii. The land under The Executive Center is owned by Bishop Estate. The insurance broker for Sukarman Sia is Mar sh & McLennan. A prime lender on The Executive Centre was Citibank. Terry McAuliffe - From Drudge Report, 12/11/99: Clinton's closest and most loyal Washington friend, Terry McAuliff, has raised more than $275 million for Clinton's causes, reports Jeff Gerth in Sunday editions of the NY Times. Along the way, he's made millions of dollars for himself, too! . . . McAuliffe has spawned "a web of business deals, from telecommunications to real estate" that McAuliff keeps far from the public spotlight. . . . Gerth claims: "McAuliff has transformed the art of raising money for public figures into the art of raising money for himself, leveraging a personal fortune from his political fund-raising contacts." . . . McAuliff tells Gerth that he uses his influence to get people together with President Clinton or to recommend them for presidential appointments. . . . Gerth: "McAuliffe, 42, sits on 10 corporate boards, none of them public companies. He travels to Africa and Asia, where he meets with heads of state. . . . He is an active stock trader. He speaks and plays golf regularly with his best friend, Clinton." >From Laborers.org,, 12/22/97: THE HEAT IS ON CLINTON'S MONEYMAN - Controversy is swirling around fund-raiser Terry McAuliffe. . . . As finance chairman for the Clinton/Gore Reelection Committee, McAuliffe pulled in a staggering $43 million in eight months. That made him the front runner to head the DNC - a job he turned down. Instead, McAuliff has turned his attention to his home building, insurance, and marketing businesses. . . . But McAuliff is finding that it's not easy putting politics behind him. His name has been linked to the fund-raising scandal that resulted in the disqualification of Teamsters President Ronald Carey. . . . The U.S. Attorney's Office in Washington is trying to learn more about how McAuliffe earned a lucrative fee in helping Pru dential Insurance Co. of America lease a downtown Washington building to the government. Prudential just settled a civil case involving that lease for over $300,000 without admitting any liability. . . . (McAuliffe's) business partners often are the same Clinton and McAuliffe people he taps for campaign contributions. . . . For example, Carl H. Linder, Jr., chairman of American Financial Group, Inc. and a generous giver to both parties, donated -- along with whom McAuliff is friends -- are also his partners in private deals. . . . Take his relationship with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. In 1991, McAuliff formed a partnership with a pension fund jointly operated by the IBEW and the National Electrical Contractors Assn., a management trade group. . . . The IBEW fund currently has $6 billion invested in stocks, bonds, and real estate. . . . In the 1991 deal that McAuliffe packaged and brought to the fund, the fund put up $38.7 million in cash for five apartment complexes and a rundown shopping center near St. Petersburg. McAuliffe got a 50% equity stake, even though the fund put up all the money. . . . No investment adviser was involved, says John M. Grau, co-chairman of the fund and executive v.p. of the National Electrical Contractors Assn. because McAuliffe's plan seemed like a slam-dunk: The pension plan was acquiring the properties at $10 million below their appraised price. . . . Why such a deal? Because the seller was the Resolution Trust Corp., which had taken control of the properties from Orlando-based American Pioneer Savings Bank. The RTC had rescued the S&L and placed it in receivership a year earlier -- costing taxpayers $500 million. American Pioneer had been owned by Richard A. Swann, father of Dorothy Swann, McAuliffe's wife. . . . The elder Swann once presided over a $2 billion commercial empire. But it crashed when regulators declared the S&L insolvent. . . . Since then, Swann says, he acts as McAuliffe's attorney in business ventures and is paid fees for managing McAuliffe companies. Mcauliffe says Swann is not a partner but is paid to "help with the management." Three such deals involved the IBEW and its pension funds. . . . McAuliffe's primary IBEW contact was Jack F. Moore, now retired as International Secretary of the union and co-chairman of the jointly managed pension fund. . . . In June, 1992, the IBEW pension fund did another deal with McAuliffe. It loaned him $5.8 million to buy 284 acres of Country Run, an Orlando subdivision of mostly unimproved lots. It, too, had formerly belonged to Swann's S&L. McAuliff's intention was to improve the lots and sell them or develop the property himself. . . . HEADACHES. The Country Run land itself served as the primary collateral for the loan. But McAuliffe also pledged his half ownership of the St. Pete properties as additional security. . . . Real estate consultant Marilyn K. Weitzman, president of New York's Weitzman Group Inc. and adviser to the pension fund . . . told the fund it should expect at least a 20% return. . . . That wasn't even close to what it got. The fund ended up with only a 5.3% annual gain -- and lots of headaches. . . . For one thing, McAuliffe's additional collateral vaporized by August, 1993, when the fund agreed to buy out all but a small portion of his share in the first deal, the St. Pete partnership. . . . "We didn't seel as man [Country Run] lots as we hoped," says McAuliffe. "You have ups and downs in real estate." . . . Once McAuliffe's Country Run loan was in default, the fund had the right to foreclose and take possession. But the fund never foreclosed, says Grau, because it didn't want to be left holding undeveloped land. . . . Last October, after more than three years of nonpayment, the fund sold off the Country Run loan in a package with the St. Pete properties. . . . The buyer? Terry McAuliffe. He and partner Lindner are now building homes on the Country Run lots with their company, American Heritage Homes, Inc. . . Today, McAuliffe is the second-biggest homebuilder in Orlando. . . . Meanwhile, the fund's Country Run return wound up being about half what similar loans were earning in that time span . . . As for the St. Pete properties, McAuliffe sold them to a real estate investment trust. . . The IBEW not only financed Mcauliffe's ventures, but it also helped boost his stature as a Democratic fund-raiser by contributing $6 million to party candidates from 1991 to 1996. . . The Labor Dept.'s inspector general is looking into the IBEW fund's investments. . . . The Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), says a spokesperson for Labor Dept., contains "sweeping prohibitions against self-dealing and other "insider" actions by plan trustees that result in a party receiving a benefit because of the party's relationship to the pension fund." . . . another real estate deal, this one involving Prudential Insurance, could pose legal woes for McAuliffe. The issue: whether McAuliffe pocketed an improper fee for influencing the award of a government contract. . . . In a letter signed on Mar. 18, 1993, Prudential agreed to pay McAuliffe $375,000 if the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. (PBGC) signed a 15-year, $187 million lease to occupy a downtown Washingto office building owned by the insurer. . . . The U.S. Atty for the District of Columbia charged that Prudential falsely certified, after it won the lease, that it had not hired anyone to help influence the bidding process, which is illegal under the Competition in Contracting Act. . . . Prud ential paid McAuliffe $375,000, but he says the money was a proper payment for fending off any congressional attempts to stop the deal. . . Thomas A. Renyi - CEO of Bank of New York. In 1998, Renyi shoveled in over $7.5 million in salary, bonus and other compensation from Bank of New York. Bulldoze in another $8.6 million plus in stock option grants, and that's over $16.1 million in one year. Not to mention, Renyi has over $55.4 million in unexercised stock options from previous years. See also: Bank of New York (to see where much of that "dirty" money came from.) Thomas H. O'Brien - CEO of PNC Bank Corp. In 1998, O'Brien raked in over $7 million in salary, bonus and other compensation from PNC. Add in another $2.5 million in stock options. That's a total of over $9.5 million. Thomas Hicks - From the web site of Real People for Real Change -- George W. Bush - The Dark Side. Corruption in Texas Government; State $ to Big Contributors. Bush's administration has been marked by the large amounts of state controlled money flowing to men who have either contributed large amounts to Bush's campaign, or who have made Junior personally rich through sw eet insider business deals, or both. . . . For example, the University of Texas Investment Management Company (UTIMCO) invests $1.7 billion of state money. Bush's cronies dominate this board, and in return investment funds controlled by these very cronies or their friends have received $457 million of that investment pool. There may even be more, but this obscure group -- created under Bush -- cloaks its operations in a thick veil of secrecy. . . . UTIMCO's chairman, Tom Hicks, now owns the Texas Rangers; his purchase of the team made Governor Bush a very rich man. Furthermore, Hicks and his brother gave $146,000 to the Bush campaign. In return, $252 million of the invested money went to funds run by Hicks' business associates or friends, according to the Houston Chronicle. Hicks even insisted that UTIMCO increase by $10 million an investment with a fund that he had indirect financial interest in, but UTIMCO staff halted funding after they discovered the conflict. . . . Thornton Bradshaw - From Conspirator's Hierarchy: . . . On RCA's board sits Thornton Bradshaw, president of Atlantic Richfield (ARCO) and a member of NATO, World Wildlife Fund, the Club of Rome, the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies, the Council on Foreign Relations. Bradshaw is also chairman of NBC. The most important function of RCA remains its service to British intelligence. Vernon E. Jordan - Vince Foster - Webster Hubbell - Wayne Berman - William J. Clinton - 42nd President of the United States of America; Commander-In-Chief of the U.S. Armed Services. >From Year of the Rat: . . . Our thesis is simple: The Clinton administration has made a series of Faustian bargains and policy blunders that allowed a hostile power to further its aims in Washington. In the main, Bill Clinton and Al Gore did it for money. . . . In these pages, we will show that, in order to gain and hold onto power, the Clinton administration has acted recklessly, allowing the wrong people to gain access to our most important political and economic secrets. Any number of Chinese arms dealers, spies, narcotics traffickers, gangsters, pimps, accomplices to mass murder, communist agents, and other undesirables will appear in these pages, all associated in one way or another with the White House and money. . . . Did the Clinton administration sell out America's national security to one of this country's leading and most dangerous adversaries merely to raise campaign cash? In the pages that follow, we will prove our answer, which is: Y ES ! >From Year of the Rat: The Clinton-Gore inauguration in mid-January 1993 was another opportunity for the Riadys to open their wallets. James Riady and John Huang each gave $100,000 to cover the cost of inaugural parties. The Riadys brought a number of friends from Indonesia to Washington for the swearing in ceremony. . . . Their generosity continued. At the direction of Mochtar Riady, Joe Giroir -- a Lippo partner and Arkansas "Friend of Bill" (FOB) -- bestowed a life-sized bust of Clinton upon the National Portrait Gallery. Giroir has personally contributed $200,000 to the DNC since 1993, something made easier by his $500,000-a-year compensation from Lippo. . . . In return for such generosity, the Riadys and their friends were given unparalleled access to the White House. In Jakarta, James Riady likes to brag about where he was on the afternoon of April 18, 1993. On that day eighty members of the Branch Davidian religious cult were holed up in their compound outside of Waco, Texas, when it was shattered by a tank-led assault. By the time the FBI and Treasury's Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents had completed their work, seventeen American children had burned to death. . . . As might be expected, the White House was a busy place that afternoon, and the president was preoccupied. Clinton was not too distracted, however, to chat with his leading contributors -- James Riady, John Huang, and Mark Grobmyer -- in his little study off the Oval Office. Riady later told Indonesian diplomats that, during their chat, a television in the corner showed the Waco compound burning over and over as CNN repeated its coverage. C linton even took time to show his visitors the White House Situation Room, then on full alert. White House entry logs confirm that Riady and his companions were in the presidential offices (West Wing) of the White House that day. They apparently also dropped in on Robert Rubin, now secretary of the treasury, who was then a White House economics official. NEW: From Colonel David H. Hackworth's DEFENDING AMERICA column dated March 1, 1994: GOING ALONG TO GET ALONG. . . . Today's top brass are masters of the go-along-to-get-along mentality that oozed into practice during the Vietnam War, a war where everyone from buck private to general -- less the brain dead -- knew Westmoreland's strategy and objective were criminally flawed. Yet in eight blood-splattered years, not one senior officer had the moral courage to tell the American people the truth. They closed their eyes and went about grabbing their medals and promotions while repeating Westy's false chant that victory was near. In the end, almost 60,000 body bags were filled and hundreds of thousands of men and women had their bodies and minds rearranged and forever diminished. . . . Clinton, who wouldn't know a bomber from a ballerina, and his civilian advisers -- none of whom have served in the trenches in combat -- need to know the truth. The only way to stop this shortage of moral courage is to replace almost all of the top layer of the U.S. Military's leadership with younger soldiers from the lower ranks, those still close with the troops who haven't yet been corrupted by the system. . . >From No One Left to Lie To: . . . On December 10, 1998, the majority counsel of the House Judiciary Committee, David Shippers, delivered one of the most remarkable speeches ever heard in the precincts. A leathery Chicago law 'n order Democrat, Mr. Schippers represented the old-style, big city, blue-collar sensibility which, in the age of Democrats Lite, it had been a priority for Mr. Clinton and his Sunbelt Dixiecrats to discard. The spirit of an earlier time, of a time before "smoking materials" had been banned from the White House, rasped from his delivery. After pedantically walking his hearers through a traditional prosecutor's review of an incorrigible perp . . . Mr. Schippers paused and said: "The President, then, has lied under oath in a civil deposition, lied under oath in a criminal grand jury. He lied to the people, he lied to the Cabinet, he lied to his top aides, and now he's lied under oath to the Congress of the United States. There's no one left to lie to." Read: The Secret Life of Bill Clinton - the unreported stories by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard; Compromised - Clinton, Bush and the CIA by Terry Reed and John Cummings; Boy Clinton - The Political Biography by R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.; Betrayal - How the Clinton Administration Undermined American Security by Bill Gertz; Year of the Rat - How Bill Clinton Compromised U.S. Security for Chinese Cash by Edward Timperlake and William C. Triplett, II; No One Left to Lie To - The Triangulations of William Jefferson Clinton by Christopher Hitchens; The Buying of the President by Charles Lewis. William E. Simon - A member of the Committee of 300. A partial business career listing: Partner, Solomon Brothers (1964); Deputy Sec of the Treasury (1973); Secretary of the Treasury (1974-77); Sr Consultant, Booze Allen & Hamilton (1977-79); Consultant, Allstate Insurance Co.; Pres, John M. Olin Foundation; Director, Kissinger Associates; Founding Board Member, Robert Trent Jones International Golf Club; Sr Trustee, University of Rochester; Director, Xerox Corp. William Simon was a co-investor with Bishop Estate in several business ventures, including McKenzie Methane, HonFed Savings & Loan, Sino Finance Group, Xiamen International Bank (China), and SoCal Holdings. See: Kamehameha Schools/Bishop Estate; Xiamen International Bank; Robert Trent Jones International Golf Club; SoCal Holdings Yukio Takemoto - Takemoto is a former Hawaii State Budget Director who resigned under a thunderstorm of criticism in late 1993 to become Bishop Estate's chief executive for budget and review. He made $163,010 in 1997. As state budget director under Gov. John Waihee, he came under scrutiny from a state Senate special investigative committee for his government purchase practices and investment decisions. From Equity No. 2048 - Petition of the Attorney General on Behalf of the Trust Beneficiaries to Remove and Surcharge Trustees: . . . Yukio Takemoto is the principal executive of the budget and review group of the Trust and reports directly to Peters. After the 1996 primary election, Holt owed Starr Seigle McCombs (SSM), his media and advertising consultants, $18,690.72 that SSM had paid the Vendor on behalf of Holt. . . . Takemoto asked another non-bid contractor of the Trust, Akinaka & Associate, Ltd., to help with Holt's unpaid campaign expenses. When Akinaka agreed to help, Takemoto said that Kajioka would be in touch. . . . Shortly thereafter, a Trust employee instructed the Vendor to send four invoices (each for $4,672.68, or one-fourth of the campaign debt of $18,690.72) to each of: Kajioka; Ho; Akinaka; and Okita, Kunimitzu and Associates. . . . The Vendor followed this instruction and sent false invoices to the four non-bid contractors for goods and services that were never provided to them. . . . Each of the four non-bid contractors paid the false invoice from the Vendor, and the Vendor then paid in full Holt's campaign debt to SSM. . . . All the firms that participated in the instruction of the Trust in making illegal campaign contributions by sending or paying bogus invoices were receiving, have received, and continue to receive lucrative non-bid contracts from the Trust. . . . [A Catbird Musing: As of the current date (03/01/00), Yukio Takemoto remains employed by the estate as its director of the Budget and Review Group. Hmmmmm . . .] Return to The Catbird's home page to view Part II - THE NESTS. * * * PLEASE SIGN OUR GUEST REGISTER ON OUR HOME PAGE, AND SEND US YOUR COMMENTS! * * * THANK YOU FOR VISITING THE CATBIRD SEAT! - - The Catbird MORE TO FLY YOUR WAY SOON . . . <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soap-boxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. 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