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--- Begin Message --- -Caveat Lector- <A HREF="">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions 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, CTRLgives 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.Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ======================================================================== Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html <A HREF="">Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]</A>
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-Caveat Lector- Sunday, February 9, 2003A power struggle behind closed doorsFinancial Industries audit report has the only details of founder's ousterAMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Jeffrey Demgen and Thomas Richmond had barricaded themselves behind the locked door of Richmond's office.
It was Saturday, Aug. 17, at the far West Austin headquarters of Financial Industries Corp. On the other side of the door, 70-year-old company founder and Chairman Roy Mitte sat in his wheelchair.
Unable to speak clearly since his stroke in 1992, Mitte pounded on the door, demanding entry. The two executives refused.
Within hours, they were expected at a meeting of FIC's board of directors. Just four days earlier, Demgen had told the company's outside auditor that Mitte had apparently been using company money for personal expenses.
Waiting outside, Mitte gripped a piece of paper in one hand, allegedly containing insinuations about Demgen's personal life. He'd presented a similar document to Richmond earlier in the morning.
It's unclear what Mitte was seeking or what the board discussed that day. He has denied intimidating employees.
The only public account of the encounter and other details of his alleged misconduct are in FIC's audit committee report that the company released as part of a federal lawsuit in Austin against Mitte.
What is known is that the board lined up against Mitte that Saturday. It approved four-year employment contracts for Demgen and Richmond guaranteeing $180,000 annual salaries. The next Monday, FIC put Mitte on leave, pending an investigation into his expenses.
That investigation uncovered evidence that Mitte used company money for personal expenses for at least 10 years and funneled company funds to his foundation without permission. The audit report also raises questions about how FIC's internal and external auditors could have missed the signs for so long. It describes employees intimidated by Mitte and a board reluctant to question his actions.
The company's audit report also portrays Financial Industries as more private club than public company.
FIC shareholders, for instance, have never been formally notified of the results of the board's $200,000 investigation into Mitte. They were never informed that FIC has settled four sexual harassment complaints in the past six years against the company and Mitte's son, Scott, a company director.
Nor were they told that Mitte had donated $1 million in company money to his family foundation in defiance of specific instructions from the board.
Indeed, the company has yet to disclose to its shareholders that it has sued Mitte, FIC's largest shareholder. Nevertheless, the company scolded Mitte for not disclosing the circumstances behind his dismissal after he launched a campaign to hold a shareholder vote to throw out the entire board.
Financial Industries was founded in 1972 as a life insurance company and most recently reported having 313 employees. It's a relatively small insurance company but has been one of Austin's most stable employers since moving here in 1980 from the East Coast.
Company officials decline to comment on the imbroglio. Mitte's attorneys say the dispute over the $1 million donation and expenses has nothing to do with his attempt to oust the board. A hearing is scheduled in U.S. District Court in Austin on Tuesday.
The company claims Mitte used $540,000 in company money for personal expenses since 1992, improperly authorized a $1 million donation to his private charitable foundation and used millions in company money to pay foundation expenses. Mitte attorneys say the board later authorized the donation, that he was unaware the company was paying his personal expenses and has already offered to pay back the money.
"There is no question that some of the charges should not have been charged against the company," said Roy Minton, a noted Austin criminal defense attorney who has been hired to represent Roy Mitte and his wife, Joann, who is interim executive director of the foundation.
"When it was brought to his attention and Joann's attention, they made it clear they were ready, willing and able to pay it back," Minton said.
The most puzzling aspect of the audit report is how the board could have missed what the report says was happening.
Mitte began using his corporate MasterCard for personal expenses such as groceries, improvements on his 9,200-square-foot West Lake Hills home and cable television service as early as August 1992, according to the report.
Expense assurances
Most of the expenses were filed or reviewed by Robert Bender, who was hired in 1994 as Mitte's assistant and part-time chauffeur, taking Mitte to work every day in a 1986 Rolls Royce and running errands.
Bender, now vice president of corporate relations, told investigators that shortly after being hired, he was assured by Jim Grace, FIC's former chief financial officer, and another senior executive that FIC paid Mitte's personal expenses. He recalled one executive told him: "That's the way (Mitte) wants it done," the report said.
Grace had been with Mitte longer than anyone else on the FIC board, having joined the company in 1976. He declined to comment on FIC, saying, "I'm out of it right now."
Grace was one of six company insiders on FIC's 12-member board. He retired in January 2002 with a $636,300 payout from his employment contract and another $460,700 from the company's repurchase of his FIC stock.
Not only did half of FIC's board work for the company, several of the independent directors had ties to the chairman.
Scott Mitte sat on the board, as did Elizabeth Nash, a fund-raiser for Southwest Texas State University, which has received more than $17 million from the Mittes. Two other seats are held by longtime Mitte acquaintances: W. Lewis Gilcrease, a San Marcos dentist, and Frank Parker Sr., the former owner of a Brownsville tugboat company.
None of the board members reached by phone would comment on the company.
During FIC's examination of Mitte's expenses, outside investigators were told by audit committee members and Grace that they had not known about Roy Mitte's expenses.
"The problem on an audit committee isn't what you know, it's what you don't know," said Charles Elson, director of the University of Delaware's Center for Corporate Governance. "The audit committee's job is to oversee the financial reporting process. Not to do it but to oversee it."
It's not usual that the company's longtime auditor, PricewaterhouseCoopers, wouldn't have discovered the problem because it wouldn't have looked for it during a routine audit, says Toby Bishop, president and chief executive officer of the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, an Austin-based trade group.
"It's management's responsibility to put into place controls to prevent fraud and protect shareholder assets. It's the responsibility of the board and the audit committee to make sure they've done that," Bishop said.
Dividend resistance
For Demgen, the trouble apparently began at the end of July, when he questioned the company's decision to start paying a dividend to shareholders.
Demgen had been promoted to chief financial officer after Grace retired. At a meeting in late July with Mitte, Demgen said paying a 3 percent cash dividend could deplete the company's cash reserves, according to an account of the meeting in the audit report.
In 2001, the last full year Mitte was in control, the company paid 87 cents per share in dividends. For the Roy F. and Joann Mitte Foundation, which owns 1.55 million shares, that meant roughly $1.35 million.
Since its inception in 1997, the Mitte Foundation has been treated as a philanthropic offshoot of FIC. Many company directors also sat on the foundation board.
The company provided the foundation free office space for two years and paid $1.7 million of its expenses, according to the audit report. The foundation also received a $750,000 cash donation from FIC in 2001 and the disputed $1 million in 2002.
The foundation's largest asset is a 16 percent stake in FIC. The stock accounted for $21 million of the foundation's $32 million in total assets in 2001. The foundation made $1.38 million in donations in 2001 and pledged more than $26 million over the next 20 years to Texas universities for business school scholarships, so any cut in the dividend would be of concern.
Ten minutes after the end of the meeting, Demgen was called back into the chairman's office and fired. Another executive later talked Mitte into rescinding his decision, according to the audit report.
Although he reportedly only has the partial use of one hand, speaks in words, not sentences, and is confined to a wheelchair, there is no question Roy Mitte ruled FIC with an iron hand.
"He was the driving force. I didn't seem him become less involved," said Joseph Crowe, who retired in 2001 as an FIC director after 10 years with the company.
Mitte grew up in Brownsville and worked his way through Southwest Texas State, washing dishes in the dorm cafeteria, according to the Mitte Foundation. After graduation and a stint in the Army, he taught and coached basketball at Lampasas High School.
In 1959, he left coaching to sell insurance for Aetna Life and Casualty Co. He was so successful that he formed FIC in 1972 and began acquiring smaller insurance companies. FIC became a public company in 1976 and continued to grow through acquisition.
Mitte suffered a stroke in 1992 at age 60, but it didn't prevent him from returning to work.
FIC executives soon learned how to interpret his wishes from brief, scrawled notes or a few halting words.
Bender, Mitte's assistant, was adept at interpreting his needs. "He was particularly helpful if someone came in from the outside because he could translate," said Crowe, the retired FIC director.
Bender declined to comment.
Despite his disability, Mitte has taken home $3 million a year in salary and bonus since 1998. Among chief executives of Austin companies in recent years, only Michael Dell has earned more than Mitte. Mitte's compensation in 1998, for example, was one-third of the company's profit for the year.
An `abusive' salary
"His $3 million salary was just abusive," said Fred Lazenby, a retired chairman of insurer Southlife Holding Co. and a longtime FIC shareholder. "It was basically just a special dividend to Mitte and not the other shareholders."
Mitte's lawyers say the board approved his compensation, and say he worked full days and actively ran the company, even after the stroke.
"He was constantly micromanaging the company and meeting with the vice presidents," said Jeff Knebel, an attorney for the Mitte Foundation. He was the one making all the decisions for the company."
Although he was officially dismissed as CEO on Halloween, shareholders might never have discovered the details behind his removal if it hadn't been for Michael Stewart.
On Dec. 10, Stewart, a former Internet entrepreneur, and his Austin investment firm, Pillar Foundation Group, sent a letter to FIC. The group wanted permission to look at FIC's books so it could make an offer to buy the company.
Eugene Payne, FIC's new CEO, didn't take the suggestion well. He dismissed the offer, which had been circulated among the company's largest shareholders.
The offer contained "misleading and inaccurate information," Payne said, and pointedly did not say the company would take the offer under consideration. Indeed, FIC allowed the offer to expire without comment.
That upset some larger shareholders, who privately expressed hope that they might finally reap some value in their FIC investment, now that Mitte was no longer CEO.
Still resisting sale
Payne had been an executive at FIC for 11 years before leaving in 1999 for San Marcos.
He was making $105,000 a year as chairman of Southwest Texas State's management department when he received a call from FIC's board asking him to return, according to the company. He signed a four-year employment contract on Nov. 4 worth $360,000-a-year plus bonuses.
In public statements, Payne has resisted a sale of the company, saying his management team needs time to implement their plans to grow the company.
However, the decision to cut FIC's dividend to 5 cents on Dec. 13 didn't endear him to shareholders. The company also noted in its most recent quarterly filing that "there is no guarantee that FIC will continue to pay a cash dividend to shareholders."
The company's stock price has been essentially flat for two years, making the dividend even more important to investors.
The Mittes filed a proposal to remove the entire board a month later. FIC has fought that proposal by filing a lawsuit to stop Mitte's shareholder meeting and the release of the audit report. The company has also hired a New York investment bank to consider its options, including a possible sale.
But the lawsuit appears to have upset not just the Mittes, but other large shareholders who worry the squabble between FIC and the Mittes could hurt the company's value and discourage purchase offers.
The Mitte proposal seems to have gained support among several large shareholders -- particularly the provision that the current board would be replaced by members with no ties to either the company or the Mittes.
"Litigation and wrangling to prevent or delay a shareholder meeting is distracting and costly," said John Ray, an Atlanta fund manager who supports a sale of the company. "All parties need to concentrate on the only important issue: how to sell the company for the highest and best price."
[EMAIL PROTECTED]; 912-5932
===========Lazenby was a life insurance executive for almost 40 years. He spent three-fourths of this time at National Life & Accident Insurance Co., which was acquired by Pioneer Maurice Greenberg’s American International Group in ‘82. Lazenby next founded Southlife Holding Co. He retired from that company in ’94. Lazenby was the state finance chair for U.S. Sen. Fred Thompson and heads the state finance operation of the Bush campaign.On November 2, 1920 KDKA in East Pittsburgh became the first radio station with a regular broadcasting service. By 1924, more than 2,500,000 radios were in American homes. And by October of 1925, Nashville, Tennessee was making radio history of its own. That's when the first program to be broadcast over National Life & Accident Insurance Company's new radio station was aired. The station's call letters were WSM, and abbreviation for the insurance company's motto, "We Shield Millions."The Opry was born on the fifth floor of the National Life & Accident Insurance Company building. The date was November 28, 1925 and legend has it that the featured performer for that show was Uncle Jimmy Thompson, an 80-year-old fiddler who had the reputation of knowing a thousand fiddle rounds. George D. Hay, one of America's pioneer radio showmen, was the announcer. He proclaimed himself "The Solemn Old Judge" (even though he was merely 30 years old) and launched the WSM Barn Dance, a spin-off of his National Barn Dance program from a previous Chicago radio station. Three years later, he gave it the new name - one that would stick - "the Grand Ole Opry."WSM, founded in 1925, was one nation’s original clear channel stations – radio stations that have exclusive nationwide rights to a given frequency. It was started to advertise insurance by the National Life and Accident Insurance Co.====Tom Griscom retired in 1996 as president of Gaylord Broadcasting. E.W. "Bud" Wendell retired as president and chief executive officer of Nashville-based Gaylord Entertainment Co. in 1997.
Wendell helped initiate the sale of TNN and Country Music Television to Westinghouse for $1.55 billion in that company's stock. Westinghouse later took the name of its network CBS, and Viacom bought CBS this year.
Hall started as a janitor in high school with television station WSMV, at the time owned by National Life and Accident. He graduated from Vanderbilt University with a degree in electrical engineering the day National Life opened Opryland USA theme park.
=======Transcription: Cathy O'Brien's Presentation
Mind Control
A Presentation to Justice Pro Se
by Mark Phillips and Cathy O'BrienThe Grand Ole Opry
After graduating from Muskegon Catholic Central, Senator Byrd ordered that I go to Nashville, Tennessee. Although Senator Byrd is from West Virginia, his influence in Nashville is still very strong be cause of the corruption that permeated the country music industry. CIA drug running operations were going on within the country try music industry. White slavery was prevalent. And corruption all the way to the top of the politicians from Tennessee was extensive.
Also, Senator Byrd fancied himself an entertainer. He thought he was a fiddler and he'd play at the Grand Ole Opry on occasion. And it was on one of those occasions that I was first went to Nashville. Playing music behind Senator Byrd was a guy named Wayne Cox.
***As my handler, Cox followed Senator Byrd's instructions to insure that I was at certain places at specific times for mind control programming and above all, for further traumatization. Because Senator Byrd was preparing me to participate in criminal covert operations during the Reagan-Bush administration, he wanted numerous memory compartments to be programmed. Which meant I would need to be further traumatized for each "compartment" and Wayne Cox was actively involved as a serial killer in occultism.
==========http://www.davidicke.net/emagazine/vol10/articles/opry.html
Country Music and the
Confederate Secret Service
by MikeThe dots are starting to connect in my brain about the Illuminati and their various secret sub-societies. Cathy O'Brien's book "Transformation of America" mentioned numerous country music celebrities who were either drug dealers for the C.I.A. or either programmers of MPD MKMonarch slaves or abusers of MPD slaves. Fritz Springmeier's book "The Illuminati Mind Control Formula" goes into this MKMonarch programming in great Detail. Fritz Springmeier's book also has a who's who list of country music celebrities either using MPD slaves or distributing drugs for the various intelligence agencies.
This brings to mind a book that I had a very hard time getting my hands on. The name of the book was "Jesse James was One of His Names" by Jesse Woodson James the 3rd and Del Schroeder. During a discussion over the phone with A. Ralph Epperson author of the "Unseen Hand" regarding the Masonic connection to the New World Order, he told me that during the Civil War (1860-1865) and after there had been a secret society known as the Knights of the Golden Circle. The Knights had evolved as all secret societies within the Illuminati had done. In other words they were a secret society within a secret society. The Knights of the Golden Circle were created directly out of the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry.
The Knights of the Golden Circle turned out to be one of the hardest groups to research that I have ever tried to research. Virtually no material exists on the guys. However after having interviewed dozens of Freemasons in Texas, I have found that most of the old time Freemasons are acutely aware of the existence of the Knights of the Golden Circle.
Another rare book that I got my hands on was written by John Wilkes Booth's granddaughter Iola Forrester Booth. The title of her book written in 1935 was "This One Mad Act". "This One Mad Act" described the activities of her infamous grandfather John Wilkes Booth who came from a whole family of actors in the time of the 1860's. Iola Forrester Booth had concluded from her own research that her grandfather was indeed a member of this shadowy organization known as the Knights of the Golden Circle. If you read her book you will be absolutely certain that Booth was part of this group. Most interestingly, Ms. Booth says that her father was not killed in Baltimore, Maryland, as the controlled media history books would tell us. But that he escaped with the assistance of his fraternal brothers. And furthermore he lived to a ripe old age.
I may be flipping around between too many books at this point so let me get back to my original statement. The most revealing book about the whole conspiracy is undoubtedly the book entitled "Jesse James Was One of His Names" by Jesse James grandson Jesse Woodson James the 3rd and Del Schroeder. The first thing a researcher learns about this book is how hard it is to find. I have had people ask as much as $500.00 for a copy of it. Luckily I found a copy at the Library of Congress. The reason for the scarcity of this book is that every chapter of the book is a cryptogram. That is, each chapter is a word puzzle supposedly concealing or revealing the locations that Jesse James used to hide the gold bullion stolen from banks, stagecoaches and trains that was to be used to start a New Confederacy in the Great Northwest. Treasure hunters all over North America use the book as a guide to hopefully help them locate with their metal detectors the gold bullion that Jesse James and his gang stashed all over the South.
So what you are asking yourself does all of this have to do with country music? Well in the book Jesse James said the Supreme Headquarters for the Knights of the Golden Circle was located in Nashville, Tennessee. The actual address of the Supreme Headquarters was 814 Fatherland Drive near downtown Nashville. You see 814 Fatherland Dr. was the home of Doctor Sylvester Frank James the older brother of Jesse James and high-ranking member of the Knights of the Golden Circle. What this has to do with country music is this.. The ORIGINAL home of the Grand Ole Opry is the DIXIE TABERNACLE also located at 814 Fatherland Drive in Nashville.
Whether this is one of the peculiar coincidences of history or if there is a real connection between the Grand Ole Opry who knows? But one other thing about the Knights of the Golden Circle that has to be mentioned is this. The Greek word for circle is KUKLUS. So after the Civil War ended the Knights of the Golden Circle remained cloaked in secrecy but created a new terrorist organization known as the Ku Klux Klan.
So as I tell my friends if you want to know who the real Ku Klux Klan is just follow the rules of simple algebra.
IF A=B (Scottish Rite of Freemasonry is equal to the Knights of the Golden Circle)
and
B=C (Knights of the Golden Circle is Equal to the Ku Klux Klan)
Then A is also equal to C.
Which means that if you want to know who the real Ku Klux Klan is you have to look no farther than your friendly neighborhood lodge of the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry.
Mike from Dallas<A HREF="">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions 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, CTRLgives 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.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ======================================================================== Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html <A HREF="">Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]</A>
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