Paul Manafort, Roger Stone and the Ghost of Roy Cohn

            From 2005 to 2014, Donald Trump's Campaign Director Paul Manafort was a political advisor to Ukrainian President Viktor F. Yanukovych who was staunchly pro-Russian. In 2014, Yanukovych was driven from office. Hand-written ledgers in the offices of Yanukovych's political party contain entries of $12.7 million in previously undisclosed cash disbursements to Manafort.

            When asked for comment about these entries Mr. Manafort stated that:

“The suggestion that I accepted cash payments is unfounded, silly and nonsensical,” Manafort said, adding that he never worked for the governments of Ukraine or Russia and that he stopped working in Ukraine after the October 2014 elections there."

            Mr. Manafort's response is an adroit non-denial denial. There is no indication in the ledger as to what the cash disbursements were for. The issue is whether cash was disbursed at his direction and, if so, for what purpose. Roger Stone is a longtime political operative and partner of Manafort.

            There is an incident in 1980 in which Stone was involved that illustrates just how evasive Manafort's non-denial may be. The basic facts of the incident were reported by Matt Labash in The Weekly Standard in a profile of Roger Stone.[i] Some underlying facts which fill in gaps of the story I can fill in from confidential sources in the Liberal Party which was the supposed object of a $125,000 cash bribe. It was gathered by Roy Cohn and delivered in an unopened valise to an attorney associated with the Liberal Party by Stone. The intent was to purchase the endorsement of the Liberal Party for John Anderson as an independent candidate for President.

            The Liberal Party did in fact endorse Anderson and the Anderson vote on the Liberal line allowed Reagan to carry New York with a plurality (not a majority of the vote).

            It is fairly clear that the attorney who received the bribe money was the late Ray Harding. In 2009, he pleaded guilty to charges that he had taken $800,000 for doing favors for Mr. Hevesi. He had acted as a sham intermediary for associates of the comptroller who were awarded lucrative contracts to manage the state’s $141 billion pension fund. He also had schemed to secure a State Assembly seat for Mr. Hevesi’s son.

            According to one source what Cohn and Stone were paying for was "garbage." The leadership of the Party was totally uniformed of the bribe. The vote occurred within two days of delivery of the cash to Harding.

            The reason the purported bribe was garbage was that the leadership had already decided to endorse Anderson because despite much lobbying by the Liberal Party, the Carter White House had been unresponsive to Liberal Party complaints about the outsourcing of US jobs to foreign countries. This was over a decade before NAFTA. The Liberal Party was actually the creation of New York City garment center unions. Saving NYC garment center jobs was paramount to those unions. Despite weeks of lobbying, the Carter Administration offered no support to the Union demands. The Anderson vote was foreordained before the Cohn-Stone $125,000 bribe.

            I have noted on occasion, that in my opinion the first and greatest politician of all time was Chanticleer,  the rooster who crows so that the sun may rise.

            Here's what this tale has to do with Paul Manafort and his non-denial denial: Did Roy Cohn receive a cash payment? Did Roger Stone receive a cash payment? They may have conspired to bribe the Liberal Party, but they both could argue they were only conduits for cash payments, not the recipients.

            The bottom line is this: Manafort's carefully worded denial tells us nothing and may be technically true. The issue might be to whom did he either deliver or direct the payments to? That might be something that keepers of the register would have wanted to keep secret.

            Hear the laughter? It's Roy Cohn's ghost.

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[i] Matt Labash, "Roger Stone Political Animal," Weekly Standard, November 5, 2007

Putin's "fold em" moment

The NY Times which came in second to the Washington Post on the Watergate scandal just took the lead in what will become a race for the Pulitzer with a documented story on the financial interests and probable corruption of Donald Trump's Campaign Director Paul Manafort in his dealings with the Ukraine AND some hint of his relationship to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

See "Secret Ledger in Ukraine Lists Cash for Donald Trump’s Campaign Chief"

Yesterday morning, I posted about my concerns that the activities of Russian intelligence agencies posed a clear and present danger for the integrity of the November 8, 2016 US Presidential election. There is still danger for mischief without doubt but the Times story raises substantial issues of criminality for Manafort and ultimately Trump that may moot Putin's cleverest plans.

When it comes to the survival of US democracy I think an appropriate metaphor might be the Battle of Gettysburg (July, 1863) and Picket's charge when an over-confident Robert E. Lee gambled on an all or nothing attack on the heavily defended Union center. He lost his gamble. I remember a legend that after the Confederates were repulsed, Union commander George Meade rode the line horseback yelling "The Union is saved." 

Putin is a brilliant strategist intent on Russian world hegemony. He has bet the house on undermining the November 8, 2016 election in order to elect Donald Trump. Yesterday, I warned that the sky is falling. Now, given who Paul Manafort is, and Trump's reputed $700 million debt to the Russians, Hillary's lead in the polls will undoubtedly stiffen or rise. I doubt that Manafort will be making too many TV appearances. There is in the Times links to Putin's own finances. Perhaps it's time for Putin to heed the advice of Kenny Rogers. When it comes to the US Presidential election. "it's time to fold 'em"

Problems of electronic ballot security remain but today, reading the NY Times, my only thought is: The Union is saved!

PUTIN and TRUMP: Will the American Dream end on November 8, 2016

I do not mean to sound like Henny Penny warning that the sky is falling, but it may very well fall on November 8, 2016 and effectively extinguish American democracy. It is under assault from two directions and like any good assault, there is strong evidence that the two prongs are acting in coordination.

One of those prongs is the campaign by Vladimir Putin to seek Russian world hegemony by supporting right-wing fascist groups. His first goal is to break-up and destroy both NATO and the common market of the European Union. The British BREXIT vote was a triumph for that policy.

It may never be possible to determine to what extent Putin intervened in the BREXIT referendum. However, actions of hackers linked to Russian intelligence attacking the Democratic Party raise an interesting question: to what extent did those same Russian intelligence assets intervene in the BREXIT vote. One problem is that there were no exit polls for the BREXIT voting on referendum day to give us a clue.

The sophistication and targeting of the Russian effort is illustrated by its focus on an individual who might not seem to be a prime target of Russian intelligence until you understand just what this individual was doing: investigating the connections of Paul Manafort, Trump's campaign director who in fact has strong connections to the Russian oligarchy that surrounds and enriches Putin.

Clear and Present Danger

The second prong is the Trump campaign whose director, Paul Manafort has known ties to Putin's Russian oligarchs. Trump last week claimed that the only way he would lose Pennsylvania would be if the Pennsylvania vote was stolen by Clinton. He urged his supporters to organize and watch the polling places to prevent "fraud." What's really odd, and thus disturbing, is the simple fact that according to the Real Politics index of polls, the last four polls in Pennsylvania have Clinton leading by double digits and the combine average for the last six polls is a lead of 9.6.

What's terribly disturbing is the make-up a large segment of Trump's shrinking voter base: armed militias and armed supporters of "The Second Amendment," who Trump says must protect us from a Clinton Presidency. The Supreme Court has remarked that the Constitutional right to free speech does not include "the right to falsely shouting fire in a crowded theater." Metaphorically, that is what Trump is doing.

One apparent object of the Russian hacking operation was Alexandra Chalupa. On May 4, 2016, she wrote a colleague at the DNC  that ever since she began collecting information on Trump campaign director Paul Manafort, she had been receiving daily security warnings from Yahoo that her personal account may have “been the target of state-sponsored actors.” Such notifications are routine when an internet or email provider suspects that a user may have been hacked or is likely to be hacked. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/07/25/fbi-suspects-russia-hacked-dnc-u-s-officials-say-it-was-to-elect-donald-trump.html

The combination of Russian intelligence operatives and Trump's strange claim that only fraud will prevent him from winning a state where he trails badly in the polls, auger badly for election day in Pennsylvania and probably other states.

I am afraid that the sky is falling, I might just be right. I only hope I am wrong.

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Wiki Leaks posting on communication between Chalupua and the DNC

_______________________________________

Re: You saw this, right?

From:ChalupaA@dnc.org To: MirandaL@dnc.org  Date: 2016-05-04 01:56 Subject: Re: You saw this, right?

A lot more coming down the pipe. I spoke to a delegation of 68 investigative journalists from Ukraine last Wednesday at the Library of Congress - the Open World Society's forum - they put me on the program to speak specifically about Paul Manafort and I invited Michael Isikoff whom I've been working with for the past few weeks and connected him to the Ukrainians. More offline tomorrow since there is a big Trump component you and Lauren need to be aware of that will hit in next few weeks and something I'm working on you should be aware of. Since I started digging into Manafort these messages have been a daily occurrence on my yahoo account despite changing my password often: [image1.JPG] Sent from my iPhone On May 3, 2016, at 10:50 PM, Miranda, Luis > wrote: http://www.politifact.com/global-news/article/2016/may/02/paul-manafort-donald-trumps-top-adviser-and-his-ti/ [SigDems]Luis Miranda, Communications Director Democratic National Committee 202-863-8148 – MirandaL@dnc.org - @MiraLuisDC

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Roy Cohn's Spirit infuses the Trump Campaign

Like Jacob Marley in Dickens's A Christmas Carol, Roy Cohn is dead and gone. Now his ghost is paying us a visit in the context of Donald Trump's candidacy for President. There are some differences. Marley's spirit sought to warn Scrooge to mend his ways; Cohn's spirit, in the form of his protégé Roger Stone, is the apparent advocate of the worst of Trump's rhetoric including his claim that the November election is rigged and threatening a revolution if Trump loses the rigged election. See https://mediamatters.org/blog/2016/08/05/trump-confidante-roger-stone-pushes-clinton-aide-911-conspiracy-claims-trump-views-rnc-chairman/212214

Roy Cohn is immortal. In Angels in America, the 1993 Pulitzer Prize winner for drama, the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg tells us so.

ETHEL ROSENBERG: You're immortal.
 ROY: I'm immortal. Ethel. (He forces himself to stand) 
I have forced my way into history. I ain't never gonna die.

Angels' America is a bleak surreal plain, where lost souls teeter on the brink of apocalypse. Cohn is a metaphor for the seductive, dark side of the American dream. Awash in intransigent denial, the playwright limns Cohn's audacious ego, cunning seductiveness, brutal transcendent power and helplessness against ravages of AIDS. It is a chilling, provocative portrait. 

As black as the playwright's perception may be, the reality of Cohn's life is darker still. His career embodies the confluence of two primeval forces of our day, organized crime and rabid anti-communism, into a single, swift current. Those forces manifested themselves in Las Vegas casinos, Havana gambling palaces, the Bay of Pigs, Dealey Plaza, Watergate and beyond. While Roy Cohn was not solely responsible for these events, or clearly a direct participant in all of them, so much of the current of his life runs through each of them, that the study of his life and power enlightens the causes and effects of many of the most significant events of our times.

There is an excellent posting this week which relate Stone's involvement with Trump's campaign. 
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/08/jacob_weisberg_s_classic_new_republic_profile_of_trump_adviser_roger_stone.html 

Another posting warns of Russian interference in our election process on Trump's behalf.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/07/an_interview_with_anne_applebaum_on_the_russian_hack_of_the_dnc.html

I would also recommend Wayne Barrett's Trump: The Greatest Show on Earth: The Deals, the Downfall, the Reinvention which has been updated and reissued for this campaign year. It's available in E-Book format or paperback on all major internet bookseller pages.

As Bob Dylan sang:

"You don't have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing."

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The Apocalypse is now!

While there may be some who read this who welcome the results of the BREXIT vote in the tenuously "United" Kingdom and/or support the erratic Presidential campaign of Donald Trump, the concurrence of BREXIT vote and Trump campaign is continuing evidence of the apocalyptic nature of our times where climate change threatens the extinction of humanity. Although he eschews the word "Apocalypse" Pope Francis has recognized the selfish instincts which threaten the survival of our posterity. The drought and fires in the western US and the epic floods in West Virginia are just two examples of what awaits humanities future.

The BREXIT vote in particular has drawn me this Sunday to one poem that has affected me deeply and guided my thoughts for decades: William Butler Yeats The Second Coming"  published in 1919.

"Things fall part" Yeats wrote. "the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world . . . The blood-dimmed tide is loosed … The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity."

In my book The Coming of the Quantum Christ I wrote of an Apocalypse of Selfishness. Trump is the embodiment of selfishness. When a horrible massacre occurred in Orlando, Florida, Trump's first message did not reflect sympathy and concern for the victims and their families but how everybody was congratulating him for being right about the threat of Islam. He was actually in Scotland the day after the BREXIT vote "trumpeting" the beautiful amenities of his two Scottish golf courses until he was directed to the BREXIT, the results which has embraced. Indeed, Trump remarked that because BREXIT is devaluing the British Pound Sterling, his resorts will do well, The devaluation of the pound makes US dollars more valuable and will attract  more US visitors to Scotland.  He expressed no sympathy for British pensioners whose pensions will be devalued along with the pound.

Is it any wonder that I earlier asked tongue not entirely in cheek whether he was the Anti-Christ? Pope Francis has made it abundantly clear that in his view that selfishness is the driving force of climate change. On May 21, 2014, he lamented “If we destroy creation, creation will destroy us.”

Only by united, unselfish actions can we ameliorate the extreme result of climate change: the extinction of humanity. Trump and the BREXIT vote are material manifestations of selfishness in action. I read the last stanza of Yeats poem to be not an inquiry about Christ but the Anti-Christ:

The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

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Orlando and the Masque of the Orange Death

It turns out there was another attack on the LBGT community thwarted yesterday in Santa Monica, CA. "20-year-old Wesley Howell reportedly traveled from Indiana to attack the Southern California LGTB event" There is a disturbing resonance with the Orlando attack. In his car were three AR-15 assault rifles with high capacity magazines. Yesterday on my Facebook page, I noted that there seemed to be an emerging pattern in the "lone nut" attacks that indicated inspiration from an ISIS standard operating procedure (SOP) is confirmed by different common threads and in this case far more important and deadly: the AR-15s and the high capacity magazines.

One doesn't have to be Sherlock Holmes to at least suspect that the fact that Howell was carrying three AR-15s may indicate a thwarted meeting with co-conspirators.

My main point is that we are going to hear a lot about what we can do to thwart the ISIS self-motivated terrorists. Frankly we had done something in the wake of the attempted Assassination of Ronald Reagan the Brady Bill. A key feature of the bill was struck by the Supreme Court. Because of the perceived power of the National Rifle Association no progress has been made in protecting the American public from gun violence. Congress even defeated an Obama proposal that gun sales to individuals on the terrorist watch list be banned.

In some states, like New York the sale of high capacity magazines has been banned. But New York is helpless to the importation of AR15s and high capacity  magazines from sister states.

The Orlando massacre will become an issue in the Presidential campaign. Donald Trump has already congratulated himself for his foresight in demanding an end to ANY Muslim entering the United States although the Orlando assassin was a native born American citizen. The problem with ISIS inspired lone wolf attacks is that the supply of disaffected individuals seeking a place in the sun who are native born US citizens while not unlimited is undoubtedly quite large.

It's time to ban high capacity magazines nation wide and adopt reasonable restrictions of assault rifles. Sales to individuals on the terrorist watch list must also be banned although any individual who feels unjustifiable denied a gun ought to have a right to appeal. One candidate for President (and I expect one sitting President) will raise that issue. Another candidate for President having pledged his fealty to the NRA will oppose any remedial gun control legislation. His claim will be that his Mexican wall and barring any Muslim immigration is the answer.

Except that's irrelevant to what happened in Orlando and might have happened in Santa Monica. For a relevant essay on the topic see Edgar Alan Poe and The Masque of the Red Death. Or maybe this time the mask is orange.

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The Legend of the Coventry Raid and 9/11

Some people when they hear the word Coventry will recall the salacious legend of Lady Godiva riding naked through the countryside to protest taxes. However there is another Coventry legend whose truth is also a disputed legend that has relevance to the controversy over the responsibility, or lack thereof, of Ex-President George W. Bush for the success of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center on 9/11/2001.

That legend is the deliberate decision by Churchill to not reposition RAF squadrons to protect Coventry when he was informed by MK-Ultra code breakers that the Nazis were preparing a massive raid on aircraft production facilities in Coventry in 1940. One of the most closely guarded secrets of World War II was the fact that the British (with help of Polish Ex-Patriots) had broken the most secret German codes and were well-informed of the Nazis plans before they were executed. Should the Nazis have discovered that secret, then they would have been able to alter their codes and the incredible advantage of the MK-Ultra program would have been lost. There is no question that Ultra was an important part of the Allied victory in World War II.

 That's the legend and it is disputed but there is a terrible logic to it. See http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-11486219 Then again, many legends which distort, or completely lack truth, can provide lessons.

There is one thing that is not a legend: that from the day of George Bush's inauguration in January 2001, his administration was looking for war with Iraq. There is another fact: that in August 2001, more than a month before 9/11, the CIA sent an official to the Bush ranch in Texas where GWB was vacationing and warned him that some action by Osama bin Laden was imminent. According to the courier Bush said "You've covered your a** and went back to cutting brush." There is no evidence of any attempt by the Bush administration to take any action in light of the warning. In fact, there had been attempts by bin Laden terrorists to hijack planes, one of them in the Philippines had been recently thwarted in 2001. Lax security at Boston's Logan Airport was a necessary component of Al Qaeda's 9/11 plans.

Did the Bush administration ignore the warnings of an imminent attack by Al Qaeda because it was in fact looking for an excuse to go to war with Iraq and oust Saddam Hussein? http://www.cbsnews.com/news/bush-sought-way-to-invade-iraq/

You do not have to be either a Democrat or someone addicted to conspiracy theories, to conclude that the Iraqi war launched by the Bush administration was one of the biggest follies of American foreign policy in history. The thousands of fatalities both of American soldiers and Iraqi civilians, the tens of thousands of horribly wounded American soldiers who are with us today and the chaotic conditions in the Middle East all date from the Bush administration's Iraqi fiasco.

Donald Trump in Saturday's presidential debate placed blame for our unpreparedness on 9/11 on GWB's shoulders. Trump has made many spectacularly false charges and fanciful proposals. There's an old saying that even a broken clock is right once a day. Trumps charge of Bush's culpability of unpreparedness before for 9/11, is his one time to be right.

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The Reichstag fire and Lee Harvey Oswald

I have been asked about my take on the Reichstag fire on Facebook  and I thought I had answered it last night but somehow it didn't load. Now a slightly expanded response. It's not something I have studied extensively but I think I know enough to make the following comment. I analogize it to the JFK assassination so hold on to your hats.

The Reichstag, the Germany's capitol building in Berlin was devastated by a fire in 1933 just when the Nazi's had gained control of the Germany Bundestag and Hitler had formed a government. Wikipedia has an entry on it in case you want some details. It corresponds to what I had read some years ago but goes deeper.

The issue is whether the person accused of setting the fire was an agent of the international communist conspiracy through the Comintern, a loan nut, or a false flag patsy planted by the Nazis. The result redounded to the benefit of the Nazi's who used as an argument for justification of giving dictatorial powers to the newly elected Chancellor, Hitler. From the Nazi's viewpoint it was either a total success of a devious plot or gift from heaven (or hell).

We have a rough analogy in our own time in Lee Harvey Oswald. Was he a lone nut assassin? Was he a Fidel Castro operative? Was he a foil or patsy for hidden (barely) US interests who regarded Kennedy as a traitor for his settling the Cuban Missile crisis without war and indicating that he was prepared to withdraw from Vietnam? To the extent the plotters may have wanted war with Castro, it didn't work. To the extent they wanted continued intervention in Vietnam, it did.

The military-industrial complex profited mightily from the Vietnam War. 56,000 Americans and their families paid dearly (not to mention hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese.)

In 1935, Sinclair Lewis wrote a novel called "It Can't Happen Here" which was a satire about a hypothetical  rise of fascism in the United States. Well that didn't happen here. Or did it?

When I look at the Trump message of exclusion and bias and cozing-up to the despot Putin and I realize just how much he is echoing the bias and prejudices of a significant number of Americans, I am concerned. Trump is not anti-Semitic. But his dream of a white restoration to power echo's the Nazi's anti-Semitism. He appeals to our worse impulses.

This is not a promo for my book "Quantum Christ" but if you are interested:

http://johnklotz.blogspot.com/2015_01_01_archive.html