... lu dans le Washington Post!
Tout comme Rothschild et Bronfman sont les parrains du sénateur et candidat présidentiel John McCain (2008), Sheldon Adelson, "le juif le plus riche du monde" qui vient de donner 25 millions$ au Mémorial de l'Holocauste de Yad Vashem, est le parrain du candidat présidentiel et président de la Chambre des représentants Newt Gingrich. Adelson et Bronfman contribuent à financer Birthright Israel, une organisation sioniste internationale qui fait la promotion de l'immigration juive en Israël. Adelson et Bronfman ont accumulé leur fortune grâce à leurs activités dans le crime organisé. Les sionistes Gingrich et Adelson sont deux puissants alliés du PM israélien Netanyahou. Gingrich a déclaré récemment que l'Iran cachait des armes de destruction massives sous des mosquées! Il manque à ce point de subtilité que cela inquiète certains propagandistes juifs.
Marianne Gingrich a travaillé pour IEDC, qui est sous le contrôle de Larry Silverstein -- un milliardaire juif sioniste, ancien président du United Jewish Appeal, proche ami de Netanyahou et Barak, qui a pris le contrôle du bail du WTC peu de temps avant les attaques du 9/11. (Voir aussi Madoff = Silverstein = Mossad)
Mais son patron à elle au sein de la compagnie était nul autre que David Yerushalmi -- le gourou américain juif hassidique de l'anti-Islam! (Dont les opérations sont financées en partie par le politicien sioniste Frank Gaffney.)
BRIBERY SCANDAL
ALMOST NABBED NEWT
ALMOST NABBED NEWT
NEWT AND MARIANNE GINGRICH__SARKIS SOGHANALIAN__LOUIS FREEH
by Michael Collins Piper
for American Free Press
for American Free Press
In 1997, hardworking FBI agents in Miami were on the verge (they thought) of snaring then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich and his second wife, Marianne, in a $10 million bribery scandal involving multiple ties to key elements of the Israeli lobby in Washington. However, then-FBI Director Louis Freeh stepped in, and the impending sting was called off.
This revelation appeared on page A-2 of The Washington Post on Dec. 15, but it has not been mentioned in The New York Times or been given any play in the major broadcast media.
While the Post downplayed the Israeli connection, a limited rendition of the story in one brief UPI report—published in only a few newspapers—never mentioned the underlying pivotal, in-depth role of Israeli-linked intermediaries in the matter.
Instead, the reports focused on international arms dealer Sarkis Soghanalian’s ties to the affair, leading many readers to think Gingrich was involved in arms trafficking. In reality, it was the arms dealer, a longtime FBI informant, who was acting on behalf of the FBI in the effort to nab Gingrich.
The Post story was based on a far more detailed and revealing exposition of some 6,400 words by veteran intelligence correspondent Joe Trento, published on his website at dcbureau.org. The entire scenario is complex, reflecting events taking place over several years time. But the bottom line is that Gingrich and his wife were allegedly attempting to shake down Soghanalian for a $10 million bribe and that, from the beginning, operatives for Israel were on the scene, acting as middlemen for the Gingrich duo.
Mrs. Gingrich firstmade a connection to Soghanalian through her position as a former paid pitch-woman for the Israel Export Development Corporation (IEDC)—a front for a group of Jewish billionaires eager to promote Israeli exports into the United States. Behind IEDC were such big names as Larry Silverstein, owner of the World Trade Center at the time of the 9-11 attacks; Sy Syms of the SYMS clothing chain; and Lawrence Tisch, who controls the CBS media empire.
Soghanalian said he was first approached by Morty Bennett of Miami, who told the arms dealer he had a business associate who had an “in” with Mrs. Gingrich and that it might be possible to use that connection on Soghanalian’s behalf.
Knowing U.S. sanctions on Saddam Hussein’s Iraq were preventing the arms dealer from collecting a legal debt of $54million owed to him by Iraq, Bennett told Soghanalian that Mrs. Gingrich could help arrange—through her husband, then the speaker of the House—the lifting of the U.S. embargo so the arms dealer could secure his debt.
Bennett’s associate, Howard Ash—who had worked with Mrs. Gingrich at IEDC—was a major fundraiser for the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies (IASPS), a Jerusalem-based think tank headed by Robert Loewenberg, who Mrs. Gingrich has described as a “friend.” IASPS also included another close Gingrich friend, former Rep. Vin Weber (R-Minn.), among its “trustees”—a relationship Weber now formally denies.
Following the contact from Bennett, Soghanalian—a longtime FBI informant who had worked closely with Richard Gregorie, the assistant U.S. attorney in Miami—reported the overtures from Mrs. Gingrich’s IEDC-IASPS associates to the FBI. The FBI expressed interest, urging Soghanalian to maintain contact with the group.
Shortly thereafter, Mrs. Gingrich visited Paris—under the auspices of IEDC and at the urging of Loewenberg—in the company of Bennett and Ash, where she met Soghanalian.
Mrs. Gingrich now claims she was soliciting a donation to IEDC from Soghanalian. However, Soghanalian told the FBI that Mrs. Gingrich told him in Paris that she could use her husband’s influence to get the Iraqi embargo lifted in return for “an understanding.”
Sometime later, Bennett came back to the arms dealer, saying Mrs. Gingrich wanted $10million to get the job done.
Soghanalian was told $5 million was for Mrs. Gingrich; another $1 million was for Bennett. The recipients of the remaining $4 million were not named, but those who know how Capitol Hill bribery works presume this money would be used to help “grease the wheels” among other members of Congress who would help Gingrich expedite the operation.
Soghanalian told the FBI he was instructed the bribe was to be paid to the Washington office of IASPS, which would, in turn, launder the money to the Gingriches.
The IEDC-IASPS connection recurs throughout the scenario. Not only did another IEDC associate of Mrs. Gingrich, attorney David Yerushalmi, serve as counsel for both IEDC and IASPS, but both organizations also shared a number of employees and mutual funding sources.*
The FBI insisted it was vital that Soghanalian seal the deal directly with Mrs. Gingrich or her husband. This would clinch the criminal case against them.
As directed by the FBI, Soghanalian insisted he would not make the “donation” to the IASPS—the bribe intended for Gingrich—until he could meet Gingrich and his wife in private.
Pressured by Soghanalian, Ash told the arms dealer the House speaker would send “his own man” to Miami to meet with Soghanalian to facilitate arrangements for the meeting.
Gingrich’s “own man” was Ben Waldman. Closely tied to Netanyahu circles in Israel, Waldman—an associate of both televangelist Pat Robertson and the infamously corrupt pro-Israel Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff—had been Ronald Reagan’s liaison to the Jewish community. But at the time of the bribery conspiracy, Waldman was chief fundraiser for the IASPS.
Finally, with everything in place, the FBI set the trap for Gingrich. A lavish reception was scheduled for June 8, 1997 in Miami at a luxury home, which had actually been rented by the FBI for the sting.
Soghanalian was supposed to meet Gingrich there and solidify the deal under FBI electronic surveillance.
However, at the last minute, FBI Director Louis Freeh sent down the order that Soghanalian was not to attend the event—which Gingrich did attend—and the two-year-long investigation was brought to an abrupt end just when the FBI might have caught Gingrich agreeing to accept the payoff.
Journalist Trento quoted one FBI agent, who said: “We got so close, and when the target was in sight, we were stopped by Washington.”
In fact, both assistant U.S. attorney in Miami Richard Gregorie and the FBI’s Miami attorney, Martin King, had wanted to pursue the investigation to the end, only to be frustrated by the FBI director.
Soghanalian has since died. Bennett, Ash and Waldman—and Mrs. Gingrich—all dismiss the reported events as a tissue of lies. Gingrich has yet to comment. FBI officials now assert there was never any evidence Gingrich was aware a bribery conspiracy was under way.
——
* Considering the revelations fromthe Gingrich bribery allegations, it does not seema coincidence that longtime Gingrich associate Yerushalmi is today the driving force behind the ongoing, well-financed national Muslim-bashing campaign focusing on the danger Islamic law—sharia—supposedly poses to America. In fact, The New York Times reported on Dec. 21 that “long before he announced his presidential run . . . Newt Gingrich had become themost prominent American politician to embrace an alarming premise: that sharia, or Islamic law, poses a threat to the United States as grave [as], or graver than, terrorism.” The Times, however, did not mention the bribery scandal, its links to IEDC and IASPS, or even Yerushalmi, although it did point out that Gingrich and his ex-mistress—now his third wife—have produced a Muslim-bashing film.
——
Michael Collins Piper is an author, journalist, lecturer and radio show host. He has spoken in Russia, Malaysia, Iran, Abu Dhabi, Japan, Canada and the U.S. He is the author of Final Judgment, The New Jerusalem, The High Priests of War, Dirty Secrets, My First Days in the White House, The New Babylon, Share the Wealth, The Judas Goats, Target: Traficant and The Golem. You can order any of these books with a credit card by calling AFP/FAB toll free at 1-888-699-6397.
This revelation appeared on page A-2 of The Washington Post on Dec. 15, but it has not been mentioned in The New York Times or been given any play in the major broadcast media.
While the Post downplayed the Israeli connection, a limited rendition of the story in one brief UPI report—published in only a few newspapers—never mentioned the underlying pivotal, in-depth role of Israeli-linked intermediaries in the matter.
Instead, the reports focused on international arms dealer Sarkis Soghanalian’s ties to the affair, leading many readers to think Gingrich was involved in arms trafficking. In reality, it was the arms dealer, a longtime FBI informant, who was acting on behalf of the FBI in the effort to nab Gingrich.
The Post story was based on a far more detailed and revealing exposition of some 6,400 words by veteran intelligence correspondent Joe Trento, published on his website at dcbureau.org. The entire scenario is complex, reflecting events taking place over several years time. But the bottom line is that Gingrich and his wife were allegedly attempting to shake down Soghanalian for a $10 million bribe and that, from the beginning, operatives for Israel were on the scene, acting as middlemen for the Gingrich duo.
Mrs. Gingrich firstmade a connection to Soghanalian through her position as a former paid pitch-woman for the Israel Export Development Corporation (IEDC)—a front for a group of Jewish billionaires eager to promote Israeli exports into the United States. Behind IEDC were such big names as Larry Silverstein, owner of the World Trade Center at the time of the 9-11 attacks; Sy Syms of the SYMS clothing chain; and Lawrence Tisch, who controls the CBS media empire.
Soghanalian said he was first approached by Morty Bennett of Miami, who told the arms dealer he had a business associate who had an “in” with Mrs. Gingrich and that it might be possible to use that connection on Soghanalian’s behalf.
Knowing U.S. sanctions on Saddam Hussein’s Iraq were preventing the arms dealer from collecting a legal debt of $54million owed to him by Iraq, Bennett told Soghanalian that Mrs. Gingrich could help arrange—through her husband, then the speaker of the House—the lifting of the U.S. embargo so the arms dealer could secure his debt.
Bennett’s associate, Howard Ash—who had worked with Mrs. Gingrich at IEDC—was a major fundraiser for the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies (IASPS), a Jerusalem-based think tank headed by Robert Loewenberg, who Mrs. Gingrich has described as a “friend.” IASPS also included another close Gingrich friend, former Rep. Vin Weber (R-Minn.), among its “trustees”—a relationship Weber now formally denies.
Following the contact from Bennett, Soghanalian—a longtime FBI informant who had worked closely with Richard Gregorie, the assistant U.S. attorney in Miami—reported the overtures from Mrs. Gingrich’s IEDC-IASPS associates to the FBI. The FBI expressed interest, urging Soghanalian to maintain contact with the group.
Shortly thereafter, Mrs. Gingrich visited Paris—under the auspices of IEDC and at the urging of Loewenberg—in the company of Bennett and Ash, where she met Soghanalian.
Mrs. Gingrich now claims she was soliciting a donation to IEDC from Soghanalian. However, Soghanalian told the FBI that Mrs. Gingrich told him in Paris that she could use her husband’s influence to get the Iraqi embargo lifted in return for “an understanding.”
Sometime later, Bennett came back to the arms dealer, saying Mrs. Gingrich wanted $10million to get the job done.
Soghanalian was told $5 million was for Mrs. Gingrich; another $1 million was for Bennett. The recipients of the remaining $4 million were not named, but those who know how Capitol Hill bribery works presume this money would be used to help “grease the wheels” among other members of Congress who would help Gingrich expedite the operation.
Soghanalian told the FBI he was instructed the bribe was to be paid to the Washington office of IASPS, which would, in turn, launder the money to the Gingriches.
The IEDC-IASPS connection recurs throughout the scenario. Not only did another IEDC associate of Mrs. Gingrich, attorney David Yerushalmi, serve as counsel for both IEDC and IASPS, but both organizations also shared a number of employees and mutual funding sources.*
The FBI insisted it was vital that Soghanalian seal the deal directly with Mrs. Gingrich or her husband. This would clinch the criminal case against them.
As directed by the FBI, Soghanalian insisted he would not make the “donation” to the IASPS—the bribe intended for Gingrich—until he could meet Gingrich and his wife in private.
Pressured by Soghanalian, Ash told the arms dealer the House speaker would send “his own man” to Miami to meet with Soghanalian to facilitate arrangements for the meeting.
Gingrich’s “own man” was Ben Waldman. Closely tied to Netanyahu circles in Israel, Waldman—an associate of both televangelist Pat Robertson and the infamously corrupt pro-Israel Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff—had been Ronald Reagan’s liaison to the Jewish community. But at the time of the bribery conspiracy, Waldman was chief fundraiser for the IASPS.
Finally, with everything in place, the FBI set the trap for Gingrich. A lavish reception was scheduled for June 8, 1997 in Miami at a luxury home, which had actually been rented by the FBI for the sting.
Soghanalian was supposed to meet Gingrich there and solidify the deal under FBI electronic surveillance.
However, at the last minute, FBI Director Louis Freeh sent down the order that Soghanalian was not to attend the event—which Gingrich did attend—and the two-year-long investigation was brought to an abrupt end just when the FBI might have caught Gingrich agreeing to accept the payoff.
Journalist Trento quoted one FBI agent, who said: “We got so close, and when the target was in sight, we were stopped by Washington.”
In fact, both assistant U.S. attorney in Miami Richard Gregorie and the FBI’s Miami attorney, Martin King, had wanted to pursue the investigation to the end, only to be frustrated by the FBI director.
Soghanalian has since died. Bennett, Ash and Waldman—and Mrs. Gingrich—all dismiss the reported events as a tissue of lies. Gingrich has yet to comment. FBI officials now assert there was never any evidence Gingrich was aware a bribery conspiracy was under way.
——
* Considering the revelations fromthe Gingrich bribery allegations, it does not seema coincidence that longtime Gingrich associate Yerushalmi is today the driving force behind the ongoing, well-financed national Muslim-bashing campaign focusing on the danger Islamic law—sharia—supposedly poses to America. In fact, The New York Times reported on Dec. 21 that “long before he announced his presidential run . . . Newt Gingrich had become themost prominent American politician to embrace an alarming premise: that sharia, or Islamic law, poses a threat to the United States as grave [as], or graver than, terrorism.” The Times, however, did not mention the bribery scandal, its links to IEDC and IASPS, or even Yerushalmi, although it did point out that Gingrich and his ex-mistress—now his third wife—have produced a Muslim-bashing film.
——
Michael Collins Piper is an author, journalist, lecturer and radio show host. He has spoken in Russia, Malaysia, Iran, Abu Dhabi, Japan, Canada and the U.S. He is the author of Final Judgment, The New Jerusalem, The High Priests of War, Dirty Secrets, My First Days in the White House, The New Babylon, Share the Wealth, The Judas Goats, Target: Traficant and The Golem. You can order any of these books with a credit card by calling AFP/FAB toll free at 1-888-699-6397.
The Piper Report Dec 20, 2011
Media ‘ignores’ Jewish angle to Newt Gingrich bribery Scandal…
Among other important items dealing with the destruction of our world.
Download Here
Among other important items dealing with the destruction of our world.
Download Here
The Piper Report Dec 26, 2011
All new revelations on the Gingrich/Israeli corruption scandal. A MUST HEAR PROGRAM.
Please make sure to spread this broadcast far and wide.
Download Here
Note to those who have been inquiring about purchasing the new book by MCP entitled “Confessions of an Anti-Semite”–
There are multiple ways for people to buy the book, which is $28 per copy.
(However, please note that a signed, numbered, dated copy is $50). Foreign purchasers (including Canada) should add a minimum $15 postage.
Firstly, they can send a check, cash or money order (or credit card information, including card number and expiration date) to:
Michael Collins Piper
PO Box 15728
Washington, DC 20003
or, write to
American Free Press Newspaper
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Washington, DC 20003
or they can buy online with paypal
OR they can call 1-888-699-6397 and order by phone
(However, please note that a signed, numbered, dated copy is $50). Foreign purchasers (including Canada) should add a minimum $15 postage.
Firstly, they can send a check, cash or money order (or credit card information, including card number and expiration date) to:
Michael Collins Piper
PO Box 15728
Washington, DC 20003
or, write to
American Free Press Newspaper
645 Pennsylvania Avenue, SE #100
Washington, DC 20003
or they can buy online with paypal
OR they can call 1-888-699-6397 and order by phone
FBI considered a sting aimed at Newt Gingrich in 1997
Washington Post
By James V. Grimaldi,
The FBI ended up calling off the operation in June 1997. It decided there was no evidence that Gingrich knew anything about the conversations the arms dealer was secretly recording with a man who said he was acting on behalf of Gingrich’s then-wife, Marianne, according to people with knowledge of the investigation.
“There are so many falsehoods,” Marianne Gingrich said Thursday. “The FBI, they should have been protecting me, not going after me. This is scary stuff.”
Her lawyer, Victoria Toensing, said: “There was no basis whatsoever for an investigation. These were people puffing, which means they were making up access to a high-level goverment person.”
Gingrich’s presidential campaign did not provide immediate comment when asked for response Thursday.
The investigation began after the arms dealer, Sarkis Soghanalian, told federal prosecutors and FBI agents in Miami that Marianne Gingrich said during a meeting in Paris in 1995 that she could provide legislative favors through her husband. The case progressed to the point that it was deemed a major investigation requiring approval in Washington.
Soghanalian, a convicted felon who is now dead, said he wanted the speaker’s help in getting the arms embargo lifted so he could collect an $80 million debt from Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, according to an FBI document filed to obtain continuing wiretap authorization for the case. The facts in the document were “developed through a cooperating witness,” whom The Washington Post has confirmed was Soghanalian.
Soghanalian said Marianne Gingrich assured him “she would be able to do anything [Soghanalian] requested of her ‘as long as they had an understanding,’ ” the document states.
Several months after the meeting in Paris, a man who had been on the trip with Gingrich and Soghanalian told the arms dealer that the embargo could be lifted for the right price. In conversations recorded by Soghanalian, the man, a Miami car salesman named Morty Bennett, stated that Marianne “wanted 10 million dollars to get the job done, five million of which would go directly to Marianne Gingrich,” the document states.
Bennett said in an interview Thursday, “I knew somebody and introduced them to somebody and that was it. Thank you for calling, and don’t call me back.”
The document and the existence of the aborted sting was first revealed this week in a 6,400-word story by Joseph Trento, who operates a Web site called DC Bureau (www.dcbureau.org). Trento interviewed Soghanalian several times before his death in October at 82.
“There wasn’t any direct evidence that he knew anything,” said a source who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “The rules are you just can’t go in there and do an integrity check on someone.”
The Justice Department referred calls to the FBI, which declined to comment on the case.
The Armenian-born Soghanalian was a high-volume arms dealer nicknamed “the Merchant of Death” who was indicted by federal authorities in South Florida for conspiring to sell U.S. helicopters to Iraq in violation of a U.S. ban. His 61/2-year sentence was reduced to two years in 1993 because of his cooperation with federal authorities.
He was already a federal informant when he met with Marianne Gingrich in Paris in July 1995. Also in attendance at those meetings were Bennett and Howard Ash, who had earlier worked with Marianne Gingrich at the Israel Export Development Corp., a company that advocated for a free-trade zone in the Gaza Strip.
Marianne Gingrich, who had left her position as vice president of marketing at IEDC, said she went to Paris at the request of her former boss to help get an investment from Soghanalian in IEDC.
The FBI document states that Soghanalian, Marianne Gingrich, Ash and Bennett spent several days together in Paris. Gingrich said “her relationship with her husband was purely a relationship of convenience,” the document states. “She told [Soghanalian] that she needed her husband for economic reasons, and that he needed to keep her close because she knew of all his ‘skeletons.’ ”
“She also told [Soghanalian], ‘It’s time for me to make money using my husband, and after we get started doing this, it will be easy,” the document says.
In January 1996, the document states, Soghanalian said he received a call from Bennett, who said he was acting on behalf of Marianne Gingrich and asked for $10 million to get the embargo lifted. Bennett wanted more than $1 million in advance, $300,000 in cash. The rest of the money was to be wired into Bennett’s bank account so that it could be transferred to the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, an Israeli-based think tank with offices in Washington where Ash was a fundraiser, according to the document.
“Bennett stated that the way they had the deal structured nobody would ever be able to prove it was anything illegal,” the document states. “Bennett stated that it would be handled like a campaign payment and ensured the source that [Marianne] Gingrich knew what she was doing. Bennett stated that the money was for Gingrich and her husband and that they needed buffers to protect them.”
Marianne Gingrich said Thursday, “All that’s hogwash.”
Soghanalian asked for a telephone call with Marianne. Bennett said that “would spook Gingrich” but that he would try to arrange it “for small talk about their Paris trip,” the document states.
But Bennett never produced Marianne Gingrich. He reestablished contact with Soghanalian in February 1997, and the FBI asked for approval from headquarters to keep recording the conversations “to develop evidence of possible Hobbs Act, Conspiracy, and Bribery violations by Bennett, Ash, Marianne Gingrich, and as yet unidentified federal officials,” the document states. Ash did not return calls seeking comment.
In June 1997, Soghanalian was planning to meet Gingrich and his wife at a fundraiser in Miami arranged by Ben Waldman, a Reagan administration official who later was lobbyist Jack Abramoff’s business partner in the controversial purchase of a casino cruise line in Florida. Waldman did not return calls for comment.
FBI agents began preparing to bug the meeting, but Neil Gallagher, then deputy chief of the FBI’s criminal division, ordered the investigation closed prior to the fundraiser, people familar with the case said. They said local agents were upset by Gallagher’s move.
“I’d have to refer any comment back to the FBI,” Gallagher said Thursday.
The FBI special agent in charge in Miami at the time, Paul Philip, who signed the document, said he could not recall the case. After reviewing the document, he said he could understand why the case did not progress.
“When you’re dealing with elected officials, you have to be real careful,” he said. “Not that they can do anything to us. But their reputations are so fragile, if you don’t really, truly try to do the right thing, you could really shaft somebody.”
Staff researcher Lucy Shackelford contributed to this report.
http://www.wrmea.com/component/content/article/161-1995-april-may/7779-marianne-gingrich-denies-israel-job-is-a-qpolitical-payoffq.html
Marianne Gingrich Denies Israel Job Is a "Political Payoff"
By Nathan Jones
Marianne Gingrich, wife of House Speaker Newt Gingrich, has been hired by the Israel Export Development Co., Ltd (IEDC) as its vice president for business development. Mrs. Gingrich's interest in Israel's proposed free-trade zone, designed to attract foreign investment to Israel, was said to have begun during an eight-day trip to Israel she and her husband made in August 1994 at the expense of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Israel's Washington, DC lobby. "If I were going to get a political payoff, it would not be for the amount of money I am making," said Mrs. Gingrich, who has no experience in the field. Her salary, which she has drawn since August, is $2,500 per month, "plus commissions." Neither she nor her employers would disclose the size of the commissions. Speaker Gingrich told the Baltimore Sun, which broke the story in February, that his wife previously had her "own business." IEDC President Larry Silverstein told The Wall Street Journal that Gingrich was one of a number of congressmembers who were lobbied to support his company's proposal.
http://articles.latimes.com/1995-02-04/news/mn-28089_1_free-trade-zone
Gingrich's Wife Hired to Recruit Business for Trade Zone in Israel
February 04, 1995
Susan Baer
The Baltimore Sun
WASHINGTON — House Speaker Newt Gingrich's wife, who has no previous experience in trade promotion, has been hired at an undisclosed salary to help recruit businesses for a free-trade zone in Israel. For the past few months, Marianne Gingrich has been quietly working as vice president for business development of the Israel Export Development Co. Ltd., whose investors include a number of American businessmen, such as CBS president Laurence A. Tisch, clothing magnate Sy Syms and real estate developer Robert V. Tishman.
Mrs. Gingrich, 43, is to make her first company trip to Israel on Wednesday. She declined to make any public comment about her job. The IEDC is trying to win Israeli government approval to run the new free-trade zone, a private, high-tech business park where companies will be able to operate free of most taxes and government bureaucracy. Her appointment seems likely to raise questions about whether the Speaker's wife is being used to help the company gain the favor of the Israeli government, which is heavily dependent on U.S. foreign aid. Since September, 1994, Mrs. Gingrich has been paid a full-time salary by IEDC--neither she nor the company will disclose the amount--and she is also to earn commissions on any business she recruits for the company. Mrs. Gingrich, who is employed by the company's U.S.-based marketing unit, is IEDC's only employee in Washington; the company maintains U.S. offices in New York and Miami. "We were looking for someone with her kind of experience and her excitement," said David Yerushalmi, chairman and CEO of the 2-year-old development company, which is based in Jerusalem and incorporated in the British Virgin Islands.
ISRAEL'S FREE-TRADE DESERT FLOWER...HAS A GINGRICH GOING FOR IT (int'l. edition)
Few Israelis have ever heard of Likit, the site of what may soon become the country's first "free processing zone"--a tax-free enclave for foreign trade. Likit lies 10 kilometers northeast of Beer Sheeba, in what is now desert. The government decided the zone should be located in the Negev, the most underdeveloped part of the country. But supporters believe that within two years, the 283-hectare tract will see a boom.
The idea is to eliminate red tape for foreign investors. Israeli Finance Minister Avraham Shohat overruled experts from his own ministry who opposed the proposal on grounds that the zone would not contribute much to the economy. But since Likit is backed by some of the Jewish state's biggest American supporters, Shohat could hardly refuse.
On June 20, 1994, the Knesset passed the Free Processing Zone Law. It states that within the zone there will be no corporate tax, no value-added tax, and no import or export duties. Businesses operating there will pay only a 15% tax on distributed profits. In addition to tax incentives, companies will have the benefit of deregulated utilities, including phones, and will be exempt from foreign currency rules and import and export restrictions.
The zone was first proposed in 1992. Lobbying was spearheaded by Israel Export Development Co. (IEDC), owned by such prominent Americans as Laurence A. Tisch, CBS chairman and CEO; Michael Steinhardt of Steinhardt Partners; Morton L. Mandel, chairman and CEO of Premier Industrial Corp.; and Robert Tishman, chairman of Tishman Speyer Properties.
Backers claim the zone will create thousands of jobs for immigrants from the former Soviet Union and for recently discharged soldiers. They also predict that dozens of multinational companies, which have stayed out of Israel for political reasons, will set up shop.
In late March, the Israeli government plans to issue a tender for building and operating the zone and expects to announce the winner within 90 days. "We're looking for someone who will bring the best companies possible into the zone," says Boaz Raday, senior adviser to Shohat.
The leading contender for constructing the project is IEDC itself, which has already spent nearly $7 million planning the proposed zone and marketing it to potential clients. The Finance Ministry's Raday concedes that IEDC is the only firm entrant but says he has talked with other groups that have expressed interest in joining the bidding.
THREE TIMES. In the meantime, IEDC continues to market the zone aggressively. "We've got over 50 letters of intent from medium-to-large American, British, and German multinationals," says David Yerushalmi, IEDC chairman. All are in high tech, with a predominance of information processing outfits.
IEDC has already signed an agreement with Sprint International for phone service. Under this deal, calls from the zone to the U.S. will cost only 30 cents a minute. Israel's state-owned Bezeq Telecommunications Co. charges three times as much.
Without doubt, IEDC's highest-profile employee is Marianne Gingrich, wife of Newt Gingrich, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. Her weeklong visit to Israel in mid-February sparked a good deal of publicity.
Gingrich was hired by Yerushalmi in September as vice-president for business development. Her compensation: $2,500 a month, plus commissions. After the appointment, questions were raised about her qualifications for the job. In addition to tart comments in the U.S. media, it was suggested that her real function might be to help IEDC gain favor with the Israeli government.
Speaker Gingrich has come out in strong defense of his wife, insisting that there is no ethical problem with her new job. "She works for a private company," he said. "She does no lobbying of the U.S. government of any kind. And it seems to me that since no taxpayer funds are involved and it's an entirely private business, that she ought to be let alone."
"At the end of the day, companies are going to look at the benefits of the zone, and political pull is not going to sway them," says Yerushalmi. But with the Gingrich appointment, IEDC seems to be covering all bases.
Extrait de l'EXCELLENT article LARRY SILVERSTEIN AND 9/11, du blog Crimes of Zion:
Silverstein has investments in Israel. In fact, in 1992 he co-founded the Israel Export Development Company (IEDC) which sought to facilitate safer investment in Israel. This article by Michael Collins Piper states that Newt Gingrich's wife was on IEDC's payroll in 1995:
In early 1995 the then-newly elected Republican House Speaker, Newt Gingrich, long a vocal advocate for Israel, gave a little-noticed speech in Washington before a gathering of military and intelligence officers calling for a Middle East policy that was, in his words, “designed to force the replacement of the current regime in Iran . . . the only long-range solution that makes any sense.”Marianne Gingrich was hired in '95 as Vice President for Business Development by Silverstein's IEDC, the same year her husband became speaker of the house. It was around that time that Newt Gingrich's foreign policy views became staunchly pro-Israel and opposed to Israel's perceived enemies, even to the point where he publicly called for the CIA to overthrow the Iranian government, as referred to by Piper in his article. That was well before 9/11, and his views haven't changed. His wife had no experience in international trade, and before that appointment she was an image consultant for BeautiControl Cosmetics (source), but of course, she denied it was a political payoff. From this Dec 1995 article:
That the then-de facto leader of the “opposition” Republican Party endorsed this policy was no real surprise since, at that time, Gingrich’s wife was being paid $2,500 a month by the Israel Export Development Company, an outfit which lured American companies out of the United States into a high-tech business park in Israel.
According to an article by Connie Bruck in the New Yorker of Oct. 9, "IEDC is trying to win approval from the Israeli government to manage a free-trade zone, and the Israeli government is highly dependent on United States aid—something that Gingrich is in a position to affect." It is no coincidence that despite drastic budget-cutting this year, Congress has left aid to Israel intact.The IEDC is indeed an offshoot organisation of the IASPS. This connects Silverstein to the think tank which produced the Clean Break policy document, authored for the Israeli government by neocons Richard Perle, Douglas Feith and David Wurmser.
Bruck Describes the IEDC as an offshoot of the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies (IASPS), a hawkish arm of the pro-Israel lobby in the U.S.
Marianne Gingrich works closely with its president, Robert J. Loewenberg, who is also chairman of the board of the Koret Israel Economic Development Fund, which assigns interns to key congressional offices. According to Bruck, Loewenberg writes lengthy diatribes in the IASPS newsletter attacking the peace process, return of the Golan Heights to Syria, and "left-wing politicos and bureaucrats." He supports the immediate move of the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, which Gingrich is asking Congress to endorse.So Gingrich was staunchly supporting Silverstein's IEDC and its agenda, and the state of Israel in general, but his beauty consultant wife's employment as Vice President for Business Development was not a payoff, even though Silverstein told the Wall Street Journal that Newt Gingrich was one of several members of congress who were lobbied to support his company's proposal. We'll call it a favor then.
Extrait de l'Article de Michael Collins Piper "Elite Says: America Needs Third Party"
A hint that there were high-level forces pulling the rug out from under Obama and laying the groundwork for even more substantial political convulsions on the national level came when David S. Broder opined in The Washington Post on Jan. 21 that the election of Republican Scott Brown to succeed the late Edward M. Kennedy in the Massachusetts Senate race was “a vote of no confidence” for the president and “Democratic controlled Washington.” Broder concluded by saying that “Obama may recover . . . but it will take a significant change of direction to turn things around.”While most Americans have never heard of Broder (a longtime member of the CFR), it is no exaggeration to say that, “When David Broder speaks, people listen.” Broder’s Post column is considered “must” reading among establishment insiders in Washington. He is regularly hailed as the “dean” of America’s political pundits.While publicly identified as being the fiefdom of the Meyer-Graham publishing enterprise, the Washington Post Company, which is perceived to be a tightly held family concern, is actually an American extension — like the CFR — of the global empire of the Rothschild banking dynasty. Rothschild-connected holding companies and, in particular, longtime Rothschild family associate, Nebraska-based billionaire Warren Buffett, have a considerably greater stake in the Post Company than even the Meyer-Graham family.All of this having been said, it is critical to understand that the Post, as one of the foremost media powers on American soil, has been in the forefront of propagating the theme that some sort of “centrist” challenge to the two-party system as now constituted is in order.For example, on Feb. 25, the Rothschild-dominated Post featured a prominently placed item entitled “Washington rancor angers bipartisan town.” The article proclaimed that even in Newtown, Pa.—one of the famed well-to-do “Mainline” suburbs of Philadelphia where so-called middle-of-the-road or centrist Democrats and Republicans alike have always competed on an even level in local, state and federal elections—disgust with partisan gridlock in Washington is growing steadily.The Post asserted that the situation in Newtown is reflected all across the country in like-minded communities said by the Post to reflect “what political strategists consider the disaffected middle.”What this means, effectively, in the carefully crafted code words utilized by the Post, is that many people consider both the Democrats and the Republicans to be “too extreme”—the Democrats perceived to be “too left wing” and the Republicans to be “too right wing.”Putting aside the argument as to what constitutes either “left” or “right” politically, the point is that the Post is suggesting, as it has repeatedly in recent months, joined by The NewYork Times, that Americans are looking for a “middle ground” or “centrist” alternative.On May 2, the Post — which heretofore never had anything good to say about relatively larger-scale “independent” or “third party” efforts, ranging from those of George Wallace, Ross Perot or Pat Buchanan to Ralph Nader — featured a lead item in its much-read Sunday opinion section raising the question: “Should the two party system be challenged?”That the Post would even open up the question for discussion is very telling. While opinions, both pro- and con-, were presented, the words of one commentator in particular, Dan Schnur, director of the University of Southern California’s Unruh Institute of Politics, reflected precisely the tone of recent and notably repetitive Washington Post commentary and reportage regarding the issue.While Schnur says that the emergence of a third party is unlikely “anytime soon,” he suggests that “angry centrists” have “the best opportunity they’ve had in many, many years” over the next six months to begin laying the foundation for “the need for a new, centrist political entity that will free the country from the grip of liberal and conservative extremists.” He points out that a bevy of “besieged middle-of-the-road political figures could conceivably remake the American political landscape.”As examples, Schnur cites such figures as longtime liberal Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.), who is now actually being seriously challenged for renomination by a candidate perceived to be even more liberal than even Lincoln herself; Republican-turned-Democrat Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, who gave up running for renomination in the GOP primary facing a serious conservative challenge only to find his reelection endangered by a fight for renomination in the Democratic Party; and Florida Republican Gov. Charlie Crist, who, failing badly in his bid for the GOP Senate nomination against a conservative challenger, has now, to great fanfare in the “mainstream” media, announced his campaign as an independent.And it’s probably no coincidence that Schnur should be one echoing the Post’s propaganda line in so many respects. In 2008, Schnur was the communications director for vaunted “maverick” Sen. John McCain, the GOP presidential nominee that year, who, just four years before, was being touted as a possible partyjumping running mate for Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry.Perhaps not surprisingly,considering his own conflicts over the years with more “conservative” elements in his own party, McCain himself faces a renomination challenge—from the “right”—from former Rep. J. C. Hayward.What is particularly interesting in that another featured commentator in the Post’s give-and-take on the issue was former GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who said that a third party challenge was “not a path America should follow.”What Gingrich did not say, however, was something that Washington insiders do know: the fact that Gingrich has been privately “mentioning” to figures in the capital city’s power elite that he is considering picking retiring Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana (who — like Gingrich — is another member of the CFR) as his running mate if he (Gingrich) manages to procure the Republican Party’s 2012 presidential nomination. This is apparently the “Gingrich Solution” to partisan gridlock, some sort of “bipartisan, middle-of-the-road” approach.| Gingrich: Front Man for Shady, Shadowy Interests | ||
 | | Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is still considerably influential in high-level political circles in no small part because of the fact that his substantial political and public relations enterprises have been bankrolled by Sheldon Adelson, an international gambling tycoon.Known for his devotion to the interests of Israel, Adelson, said to be the third-richest American, has been described by the web site of the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise as “the world’s richest Jew.”It should also be noted that Gingrich benefited from the lucrative Israeli-connected intrigues of his second wife, Marianne, whom he divorced some years ago, and who was on the payroll of the Israel Export Development Company (IEDCO), which was promoting the importation into the United States of Israeli products — even as Gingrich was using his influence as a member of Congress to advance U.S.-Israeli trade.The aforementioned IEDCO was an operation run by mob-connected Larry Silverstein, the billionaire owner of theWorld Trade Center towers at the time of the 9-11 tragedy, best known for his now infamous urging — “pull it” — in reference to the trade center’s Building 7 which was deliberately imploded, a point that 9-11 researchers have documented relentlessly. |
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PICTURED: Sheldon Adelson and Larry Silverstein are two powerful Zionist figures who have bankrolled the intrigues of GOP kingpin Newt Gingrich | ||
Iran Policy Part of Long-Term Plan
Michael Collins Piper
(...)
. . .In early 1995 the then-newly elected Republican House Speaker, Newt Gingrich, long a vocal advocate for Israel, gave a little-noticed speech in Washington before a gathering of military and intelligence officers calling for a Middle East policy that was, in his words, “designed to force the replacement of the current regime in Iran . . . the only long-range solution that makes any sense.”
. . .That the then-de facto leader of the “opposition” Republican Party endorsed this policy was no real surprise since, at that time, Gingrich’s wife was being paid $2,500 a month by the Israel Export Development Company, an outfit which lured American companies out of the United States into a high-tech business park in Israel. (...)
. . .That the then-de facto leader of the “opposition” Republican Party endorsed this policy was no real surprise since, at that time, Gingrich’s wife was being paid $2,500 a month by the Israel Export Development Company, an outfit which lured American companies out of the United States into a high-tech business park in Israel. (...)
Newt Gingrich, Marianne and the Arms Dealer:
A Buried FBI Investigation
By Joseph Trento, on December 13th, 2011
National Security News Service
Newt Gingrich and second wife Marianne Gingrich.
On October 5, Sarkis Soghanalian, once the world’s largest private arms dealer, died at 82. He had sold weapons to scores of dictators including Saddam Hussein, and he took many secrets with him to his grave. But one secret he did not take involves Newt Gingrich when he was Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. DCBureau has learned that Gingrich was at the center of a U.S. Justice Department criminal investigation in the late 1990s for a scheme to shake down the arms dealer for a $10 million bribe in exchange for Gingrich using his influence as Speaker to get the Iraq arms embargo lifted so Soghanalian could collect $54 million from Saddam Hussein’s regime for weapons he had delivered during the Iran-Iraq War.
Soghanalian was an FBI informant and was responsible for launching one of the most sensitive and secret investigations in FBI history involving the former Speaker and his second wife. According to Marianne Gingrich, it took the direct intervention of then FBI Director Louis J. Freeh to “get the investigation called off.” Freeh did not return emails and telephone calls for comment.
Former FBI Director Louis Freeh
A convicted felon with a long history of working with United States intelligence, Soghanalian cooperated with the FBI in the two-year investigation which included secretly taping emissaries with connections to Newt and Marianne Gingrich. The cast of characters include personalities no Hollywood screenwriter could invent. One participant was involved in the Florida SunCruz scandal that resulted in the gangland-style killing of one of the cruise lines owners. Another was a used Rolls Royce salesman who pretended to be part of the international arms trade. A third was a penny stock promoter.
For several years, FBI agents instructed Soghanalian to get beyond the men who claimed to have ties to Gingrich and insist upon meeting with Gingrich and his former wife directly to prove that they could deliver the Speaker. But just before Soghanalian was to meet Gingrich and his former wife at a private Miami Beach fundraiser on June 8, 1997, arranged by one of these men, FBI headquarters called off the investigation. Washington ordered the FBI in Miami not to secretly tape record the fundraiser and to stop Soghanalian from attending. Marianne Gingrich, in a series of telephone interviews from her homes in Georgia and Florida, acknowledges meeting the arms dealer in Paris but insists her participation was to solicit an investment from Soghanalian for her former employer, the Israel Export Development Corporation (IEDC). She says the company was running short on cash and her meetings with the arms dealer had nothing to do with Iraq and arms dealing. Newt Gingrich did not return repeated telephone calls for comment.
Soghanalian said in a series of interviews before his death that men associated with Marianne Gingrich convinced him that Speaker Gingrich would use his influence to lift the embargo and allow Soghanalian to collect the millions of dollars owed to him by Iraq “in exchange for a $10 million payment to Gingrich through his associates.” Soghanalian was to pay the money – not to the Gingriches directly – but through a think tank, The Institute for Advanced Strategic And Political Studies (IASPS), which has offices in the United States and Israel.
Saddam Hussein’s government owed Soghanalian for arms he had delivered – all with the permission and knowledge of the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations, but he could not be paid because Iraq was under a U.S. and United Nations embargoes. After his release from prison in the mid-1990s, Soghanalian settled in Paris and started rebuilding his arms business. In the United States he faced a $54 million IRS tax lien for profits he had never received from the Iraq arms sales. He told associates that he was trying to figure out a way to collect the monies owed to him. One of those friends was a London-based Kurdish Iraqi who had close contacts with Israeli intelligence and a car salesman from Miami named Morty Bennett.
Bennett saw Soghanalian’s money problems as an opportunity. He says he passed the information from his Kurdish friend to Howard Ash, a friend from the Rolls Royce dealership in Miami where Bennett worked. Ash was a fundraiser for the IASPS, the think tank, and had worked at the IEDC with Marianne Gingrich.
In May 1995, while visiting his wife, Shirley, and his grandchildren in Palm Springs, California, Soghanalian got a phone call from Bennett. Soghanalian had never heard of him before, but Bennett says he used the name of their mutual acquaintance in London who had experience in the Kurdish arms trade to get Soghanalian to talk to him. Soghanalian said before his death, “My ears perked up when he said he had an arms deal for me in Ecuador. There are a lot of pretenders in the business, but he seemed interesting, and I always need new information for my FBI friends, so I met with him.”
That May 1995 phone call from Bennett to Soghanalian resulted in a two-year FBI investigation so sensitive that details have never before been made public. The goal of the investigation, according to a Justice Department official, “…was to see if Gingrich, through his then wife, was involved in an attempt by political associates to solicit bribes.” One of the team of FBI agents involved in the case says, “The investigation was called off before we were permitted to finish making a case.” Another agent says it was just “too politically sensitive. We got so close and when the target was in sight, we were stopped by Washington.”
According to Bennett, the entire scheme to solicit $10 million dollars from the arms dealer was Howard Ash’s idea. Ash did not return repeated calls for comment left on his answering machine or with a woman who identified herself as his employee.
Soghanalian said of when he and Bennett met, “Bennett claimed that he and a partner named Howard Ash had an ‘in’ with Speaker Newt Gingrich on behalf of the Israelis…They asked me if I would invest with them in the deal.” The “in” that Bennett and Ash had was Gingrich’s then wife Marianne. In addition to being a fundraiser for the IASPS, Ash was also Marianne Gingrich’s boss at the Israel Export Development Corporation (IEDC). Soghanalian said, “Bennett told me they just hired her before Newt was made the Speaker.” In early 1995, Marianne Gingrich says, she was promoted above Ash to Vice President of Marketing. “He resented my promotion,” she says.
Robert Loewenberg, Head of the IASPS.
Marianne Gingrich says her boss at the IEDC, David Yerushalmi, called and asked her to make the trip to Paris. Yerushalmi served as counsel to both the IEDC and the IASPS. She says that by this time the IEDC was running out of money and she was no longer on the payroll. “David told me that Howard Ash and his wife had been at the Parc Monceau Hotel in Paris for days and still did not have an answer from this arms dealer and that Ash said he needed me to come to get an answer. He paid for my expenses and even though it was at an inconvenient time, I made the trip.” She says she thought the meeting was to win Soghanalian over as an investor in the IEDC. When asked why she would be willing to meet Soghanalian, a convicted felon, when she was no longer being paid by the IEDC, she says because her friend, Robert J. Loewenberg, the head of the IASPS, and her former boss at the IEDC, David Yerushalmi, “wanted me to meet with the arms dealer in Paris as a potential investor. …I believed that Robert Loewenberg had good ideas about free trade in Israel and this would help keep it going.”
David Yerushalmi
Marianne Gingrich says she did not have a good relationship with Ash after she was promoted over him. She says, “He (Ash) really wanted me in Paris, and I thought that was a little strange. He just never had been very nice to me…but he was nice in Paris.” David Yerushalmi, who says he hired both Mrs. Gingrich and Ash, disputes Mrs. Gingrich’s allegation that there was tension between them.
As Marianne Gingrich tells it, she did not expect her job back at the IEDC if Soghanalian made the $10 million investment because she was already too busy “working with Newt on his book projects. I let him attend a meeting by himself on one of the book deals, and he left more money in that meeting than I would have made in a year working at the export zone. I decided then and there Newt needed me to handle these things.”
Mrs. Gingrich made clear that throughout their marriage money was an issue. “We were so pressed he could not even set aside money for congressional retirement until 1991. Living on his paycheck was very, very hard… Newt was like a child when it came to handling money,” she says.
Morty Bennett says he was also in Paris for the meetings with Soghanalian, Mrs. Gingrich, Howard Ash and his wife. As Bennett tells it, he began to “feel uncomfortable with what Ash was trying to do with Sarkis. My antennae should have been sharper.”
Hotel Mermoz, Paris
Bennett stayed at the Hotel Mermoz, which is around the corner from the Israeli Embassy in Paris and was a few blocks from Soghanalian’s luxury apartment on one of the most fashionable residential areas in Paris, not far from the Elysees Palace, home of the French president.
Bennett says that while he was at the hotel between meetings with Soghanalian, the Mermoz manager called him saying a man was asking whether Mrs. Gingrich was staying in his room. “I got on the phone and the man was Newt Gingrich. I explained to him she was not staying at my hotel.”
According to Mrs. Gingrich, her interest in Israel began on an eight day trip to Israel she and her then husband took in August 1994, paid for by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Israel’s largest Washington, D.C. lobbying organization. Mrs. Gingrich says Robert Loewenberg, the president of IASPS, was impressed with “my knowledge of planning and asked me to attend some meetings in Israel regarding the free trade zone.” She says that led to her being offered the position with IEDC. “Robert Loewenberg was telling me about some of the problems with the Knesset. The head of the Israeli central bank was opposing the free trade zone. I looked on the itinerary, and I went with him to a meeting and asked some good questions and the banker changed his mind. It had nothing to do with Newt. I went to the meeting. The guy kept calling me. He didn’t care about Newt. At one point he asked me to make a trip to Israel with some business people.” After the meetings in Israel with Loewenberg, the IEDC hired Mrs. Gingrich. She says that one of the reasons she took the job was “we did not have enough money. Money was always an issue with Newt…”
According to David Yerushalmi, there was no connection between IASPS, the think tank, and IEDC, the organization working for a free trade zone in Israel. But Mrs. Gingrich tells a different story. She says, “The same American Jewish funders supported both organizations and Howard Ash raised money for IASPS while he worked for the IEDC.”
A group of very wealthy Americans provided the funding for IASPS and IEDC. Both organizations shared some employees. David Yerushalmi, who represented both organizations as general counsel, wrote in an article:
“In June of 1992, a group of leading U.S. Jewish businessmen formed a company that was to become the Israel Export Development Company (IEDC). The founders of IEDC, men like Robert Tishman, Larry Tisch, Sy Syms and Larry Silverstein, were ardent supporters of the State of Israel. But like many Americans, they were leery of investing directly in Israel. However, it was their fears that made them ready to support the rather grandiose proposal embodied in IEDC’s mandate… To contemplate a real direct investment in Israel was not in the cards. The reason was simple: Israel didn’t play by any fixed rules…It was a land without any real legal protections or level playing fields. The horror stories by these men and their friends about ‘doing business’ in Israel were legion. Until IEDC came along, this was a nasty truth better kept under wraps and avoided. Philanthropy – yes; entrepreneurship – no.”
Sarkis Soghanalian and assistant Veronique Paquier the Paris air show.
In Paris, Soghanalian openly and frequently talked about finding a way to get the Iraq embargo lifted. He said he had been approached by “people connected to Newt Gingrich who were setting up a meeting with his wife to talk about what could be done for me.” Tony Khater, who was Soghanalian’s majordomo, confirmed the plans for the meeting with the Speaker’s wife.
Soghanalian said Howard Ash had brought up Mrs. Gingrich’s name “to convince me they were serious.” Soghanalian said he called a number of people to try to find out if the IEDC was a legitimate operation.
New York developer Larry Silverstein, who is best known as the main lease holder on the World Trade Center complex in New York, backed both the IASPS and IEDC. When word got out in 1995 that the IEDC had hired Mrs. Gingrich, Silverstein told The Wall Street Journal that her husband was one of several members of Congress heavily lobbied to support the Israeli free trade zone proposal. Mrs. Gingrich, who had no experience in international trade, said at the time, “If I were going to get a political payoff, it would not be for the amount of money I am making.” She said her salary in August 1994 was $2,500 per month, “plus commissions.” Then Speaker Gingrich told The Baltimore Sun, which broke the story of Marianne’s employment, that his wife had previously owned her “own business.”
In a recent interview, Marianne Gingrich says she got the job at the IEDC because she had impressed her bosses. “I was able to contact a lot of business people, and I started calling them, especially Jewish people. I went to the head of Home Depot, for example. I tried to identify them and say, ‘Here are opportunities.’ The Jewish community is an incredible community…I thought it was a good idea…I thought it would help Israel.”
Calls to Larry Silverstein’s office for comment on this story were not returned.
No one involved with the IASPS or IEDC knew that after that first telephone call from Morty Bennett to Soghanalian, the arms dealer stopped by the Miami FBI office to see his old friend, Richard Gregorie, an assistant U.S. attorney. Gregorie, a veteran public corruption prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s office, had used Soghanalian as a source for years.
Sarkis Soghanalian and Tony Khater in a helicopter over Iraq, 1984.
At the time, Soghanalian had been helping the FBI with several investigations that were unrelated to this one. Soghanalian told Gregorie and several FBI agents that he had a “bad feeling” about why he had been approached. The agents advised him “to make arrangements for another meeting and to keep track of all the details.” Tony Khater, Soghanalian’s top aide, says, “The FBI was aware of every contact Sarkis had with these people. The FBI told Sarkis to push for meetings with Gingrich and his wife. The FBI instructed Sarkis to attend the meetings, if they could be arranged.”
Morty Bennett and Soghanalian met with Howard Ash and Marianne Gingrich in Paris in July 1995. Soghanalian was extremely busy with business generated by the recent Paris Air Show, but he tape recorded the conversations with Bennett and Ash and provided copies of those tapes to the FBI.
Mrs. Gingrich says Loewenberg and Yerushalmi sent her on the trip to meet Soghanalian because “Howard Ash has been over there for weeks. His wife is over there. Can we wait it out, can we work it? The company needed money to last. They called me up and asked me to go over there. I didn’t get paid to go to Paris. They paid for my expenses, but the trip came at a bad time for me. I had to rush over for the weekend and come back because my nephew was coming to visit.”
Soghanalian said, “Marianne came one weekend with Ash and met me and Bennett. I took her to clubs and we had several dinners and luncheons.” In interviews in Paris in 1995, Soghanalian said that he was “making arrangements to get the arms embargo lifted” and that is why he was meeting with Mrs. Gingrich.
A frustrated Marianne Gingrich says it became clear to her from her initial conversations with Soghanalian in Paris that he was not interested in investing in the IEDC. “…Howard Ash and his wife had been there a long time, and my bosses wanted an answer from him. My job was to get him to say, ‘Yes,’ or, ‘No,’ and that was not easy.”
Soghanalian, a popular figure in Paris, took Mrs. Gingrich and her associates to legendary places like Regine’s and several famous restaurants where they posed for photographs with the arms dealer. Finally, Mrs. Gingrich got an answer. “The last night all of us went somewhere till two or three in the morning…It was final. He said, ‘No.’ I caught the first flight out in the morning.”
Soghanalian had a different version of events. He said that he told Ash and Mrs. Gingrich that he would talk to the Iraqis about making an investment in the free trade operation but that he would not personally invest. “I told them this may be a way of getting my money out of Iraq and doing something good for Israel…I also told Marianne I wanted to meet her husband so we could discuss a high speed train opportunity in Florida.”
Around this same time in 1995, Bennett and Ash were involved in a bizarre penny stock scheme. According to an article in the Sun Sentinel, their connection to the IEDC was used to drive up investor interest in a penny stock being promoted by a couple who called themselves Eisenhowers and held themselves out to be relatives of former President Dwight Eisenhower. Bennett, the car salesman, was described to the business press and potential investors as an Israeli consultant while Ash verified claims that the penny-stock company, Triangle Technology, had a deal to build in the IEDC’s free trade zone in Israel a $40 million dollar factory to revolutionize military aircraft x-ray inspections. Marianne Gingrich’s – as well as the very rich businessmen like Larry Silverstein’s – involvement in the IEDC was also used to reassure potential investors in the penny stock scheme. These claims and associations caused the penny stock to soar before the entire venture collapsed and many investors were left with worthless stock.
Because of changes in Israeli tax law, the free trade zone effort lost its investment appeal and the IEDC shut down. But, Morty Bennett says, “Ash still wanted me to push Sarkis. He told me to call him again.”
As Bennett tells it, on January 23, 1996, Ash instructed him to call Soghanalian at his Miami horse farm with a surprising bit of news. Bennett said to the arms dealer that Marianne Gingrich had told him the Iraq embargo could now be lifted. According to the FBI memo, “Bennett stated that it would cost the source [Soghanalian] ten million dollars to get the job done.” Bennett confirms that the FBI memo is an accurate description of what he told Soghanalian. Bennett says that Howard Ash promised him $400,000 if Sarkis made the $10 million payment.
According to Tony Khater, that is when the FBI sting operation went into high gear. That week Miami agents began officially taping conversations between Soghanalian and Bennett. The Miami office received approval for the wiretaps from the Justice Department in Washington. In its memo on the case, the FBI says: “…This matter may relate to a member of Congress and is, therefore, a sensitive investigation… [that] requires Department of Justice (DOJ) notification.”
The first official FBI tape captured Bennett telling Soghanalian that “Gingrich wanted ten million dollars to get the job done.” The split would be “$5 million for her, $4 million for unexplained purposes and $1 million for Mr. Bennett,” according to the FBI memo. Bennett asked Soghanalian for $550,000 in advance.
Bennett says, “I was operating under explicit instructions from Howard Ash. He told me exactly what to tell Sarkis in my conversations with him.”
Soghanalian became even more suspicious when Bennett asked him to deposit $250,000 into his bank account as a tax-deductible donation to the IASPS. “I began to think they were getting me involved in some Israeli intelligence operation,” Soghanalian said. He told the FBI that Bennett asked for an additional $300,000 fee, “preferably… in cash.”
Vin Weber
Soghanalian, a consummate actor, developed a clever and ironic response to their overtures, with the approval of his FBI contacts. He told Bennett that he would talk to the Iraqi government about financing the entire deal. At the suggestion of the FBI, Soghanalian asked to speak to Mrs. Gingrich in person. Soghanalian said, “Bennett told me not until a week after the deposit was made…It was funny because Bennett said Mrs. Gingrich was very concerned about being caught on tape.”
Bennett says, “Everything I told Sarkis was done under the instructions of Howard Ash. He gave me the words.”
In early February 1996, Bennett told Soghanalian he could not arrange a meeting with Mrs. Gingrich for at least three or four weeks. A few days later Bennett called Soghanalian and asked for another $500,000 to be wired directly into Ash’s account at the IASPS.
Under FBI agents’ instructions, on February 12, 1996, Soghanalian demanded to talk to Mrs. Gingrich. “Bennett was nervous. He said it would scare her, and I should only make small talk and, if I brought up the payments, she would hang up,” Soghanalian said. “Bennett kept putting me off. He told me she had not called him back but he had a better idea. He would get me with both of them once I gave him the deposit. Bennett said that this Institute would hold a fundraiser where we could meet confidentially with Gingrich and his wife.” According to the FBI memo, Soghanalian told Bennett he would not pay $10 million without first talking to Mrs. Gingrich directly “to receive assurances regarding the specifics of this deal.” Another year passed before Bennett called him back.
Marianne Gingrich, 2012
According to Tony Khater, in January 1997, Bennett started calling Soghanalian again at the Miami horse farm. Soghanalian told the FBI, and the Miami field office asked Washington headquarters for an extension of the wiretap, since authorization to continue recording had run out. Section Chief Paul Philip signed the memo along with several other FBI agents. Richard Gregorie, the assistant U.S. Attorney, was a key supporter of the probe. The memo said that Gregorie and the FBI’s Miami lawyer, Martin King, both favored moving ahead with the Gingrich-Bennett investigation. Gregorie, the memo said, “sees no entrapment issues.”
The request was approved and the investigation continued. The FBI recorded the February 2, 1997, conversation between Soghanalian and Bennett. Officials involved in the case, Soghanalian and Khater all confirm that Soghanalian also contacted Ash at the request of the Bureau. “Ash said I should work through him and not Bennett to get to both Gingriches. They were competing for the money,” the arms dealer said. Ash reassured Soghanalian “that Gingrich would send his own man down to Miami to meet with me.”
That man was Ben Waldman, a longtime Republican operative with strong ties to the Christian conservative movement. He was not unknown to the FBI. “His name coming up in the investigation got our attention,” says an official close to the investigation who asked not to be identified. Waldman’s name had surfaced in an earlier federal investigation of bribery and kickbacks during the Reagan administration at the Department of Housing and Urban Development that resulted in the indictment and subsequent plea bargain of former Reagan Interior Secretary James Watt and other top officials – but not Waldman.
What worried Soghanalian about Waldman were not his connections to the Christian Right, but his connections to the Likud Party in Israel. “My friends in Israel told me there was an effort by the Christian Right to join with right-wing political parties around the world,” Soghanalian said. “Reagan’s people had started this in the 1980s. They even tried to use me to make contact with the Baath Party in Iraq in 1983.”
At the time of the FBI probe, Waldman was listed as the chief fundraiser for IASPS, where Ash, through Bennett, had instructed Soghanalian to send the $10 million. David Yerushalmi, who was the IASPS lawyer, confirms that both Waldman and Ash had fundraising roles at the Institute at the time. When Waldman met with Soghanalian, he said he was a Vice President of the Institute.
For the meeting between Waldman and Soghanalian, the FBI rented a luxury, waterfront home on a canal not far from the posh commercial section of downtown Ft. Lauderdale. Tony Khater says, “The meeting would be a luncheon. I had to order in an Orthodox catered lunch for Waldman.”
On cue from the FBI, Soghanalian opened the front door of the luxurious one-story house. Waldman admired the home and asked Soghanalian about the yacht docked at the backyard pier. “As we ate the lunch, Waldman asked me to donate $20,000 to this institute of his. It was the same place that Bennett wanted me to use to pay him off. I kept trying to talk about other things, like the Iraqi arms embargo,” Soghanalian said. “I asked him could Gingrich get the sanctions lifted if I paid that man the money.”
Ben Waldman
The man Howard Ash picked to replace Morty Bennett as the man to separate Sarkis Soghanalian from his millions was a former Reagan White House aide with a long history in conservative Republican and Israeli politics. Though Waldman looks like an aging boy scout, by the time he met Soghanalian for a kosher lunch, all arranged by the FBI, he had accumulated an impressive dossier of business and political associates. Waldman was among the young Republicans who grew close during the Reagan administration – men like Grover Norquist, Ralph Reed, Jack Abramoff and Adam Kidan. He was President Ronald Reagan’s liaison to the Jewish community. He also raised funds for the Institute. In an interview in the 1990s, Waldman identified himself to National Public Radio as a Vice President for IASPS.
Waldman played a key role in bringing Jewish conservative voters into the Republican Party as an aide in the Pat Roberson 1988 presidential campaign and as executive director of the National Jewish Coalition, now the Republican Jewish Coalition. He had close business and personal ties to disgraced Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff. By 2000, Waldman was president and part owner of SunCruz Casinos, a controversial offshore gaming company with organized crime connections. Another owner, Gus Boulis, was battling Abramoff for control of the company. Boulis was shot dead in his car a year later.
Reached for comment, Waldman refused to go on the record, but, prior to that, he did acknowledge he had worked with Howard Ash at the IASPS. When asked specific questions about his meeting with Soghanalian, he says, “First of all, I am not going to go on the record and, second, this happened so long ago, anything I am going to tell you is going to be clouded by my poor memory and lack of specificity. I am not in that business anymore. It is not the right thing to talk about.”
Khater, Soghanalian, and the FBI tapes reveal that at the luncheon Soghanalian insisted to Waldman that he would donate to IASPS only on the condition he could meet with Speaker and Mrs. Gingrich in private. After the luncheon, prosecutors and FBI agents in Miami were convinced that the case should be aggressively pursued.
Working with Ash, Waldman planned a fundraiser for the Institute in Miami for June 8, 1997. Waldman later confirmed to the FBI that it was Ash who gave him Soghanalian’s name as a potential donor. The reception was to feature Marianne Gingrich and “a surprise guest.” FBI agents made plans to bug the fundraiser. In mid-May, the FBI’s Miami field office once again requested permission to tape record the meeting.
According to sources inside the FBI, Neil Gallagher, then the deputy chief of the FBI’s criminal division, after seeking the advice of a half dozen other FBI and Justice Department officials – but not Attorney General Janet Reno – ordered the investigation closed. The Miami field office and prosecutors were dumbfounded. They said Gallagher shut down the investigation just when Soghanalian was to meet Gingrich and his wife at Ben Waldman’s fundraiser.
After his retirement from the FBI, Gallagher said: “We can’t go around encouraging people to offer bribes to elected officials – we don’t do that…” When called recently for comment about the case at his home in Davidson, North Carolina, Gallagher says, “I can’t talk about this. You have to call the Justice Department.”
Another senior FBI official does not believe Gallagher’s explanation: “Do you remember the Abscam case? That is where FBI agents posing as rich Arabs bribed members of Congress. Gallagher did not object then. The truth is the Bureau thought Clinton was through because of the impeachment [proceedings] and they saw Gingrich as the most powerful man in America.”
In one recent interview Mrs. Gingrich says that she was unaware that Soghanalian had been invited to the fundraiser that was held in a private condominium in Miami Beach. She says that Joe Gaylord, her former husband’s political aide, would have handled such events. Gaylord did not return repeated phone calls for comment. A Miami Herald article puts Gingrich in Miami on this date. The fundraiser took place as planned on Sunday, June 8, 1997. Soghanalian, under orders from the FBI, did not attend. Twenty-five guests enjoyed a reception with Marianne Gingrich at an upscale oceanfront condominium in Miami. Her “surprise guest” that morning, her husband, Speaker Newt Gingrich, spoke about and urged support for free-market reform in Israel.
In a later conversation about the event Mrs. Gingrich confirms she and her husband attended the IASPS fundraiser with “about fifty other guests…We stayed about an hour and Newt was a surprise guest.”
After their meetings in Paris in 1995, Marianne Gingrich says she did not hear Soghanalian’s name again for several years. “It was in October of the last election year, 1998, and I get a call from Victoria (Toensing), and I was in Ohio and just found out I had MS, and I had to go into treatment. I was on heavy steroids; I am in the middle of a medical mess, high as a kite on steroids. I had to go to the Cleveland Clinic.” Marianne Gingrich was traveling with her assistant to speak to a conservative group in Ohio. She had scheduled a side trip to see a MS specialist at the Cleveland Clinic. “I get told I have to immediately get treatment. His nurse had MS, and she had the treatments available. Then you have to take pills to come off of it…. I am in the middle of that. I get a call from Victoria, and I said, ‘Just handle it.’ I am drugged up and high as a kite and I was bloating…I wasn’t supposed to be under stress,” she says.
According to Mrs. Gingrich, the entire controversy caught her by surprise. “No hint of this until Victoria called me….to tell me I was being investigated for arms dealing,” she says.
Victoria Toensing, Mrs. Gingrich's private attorney and former Reagan administrative official.
Victoria Toensing, a former Reagan administration official, was Mrs. Gingrich’s private attorney. She and her husband, former U.S. attorney Joseph diGenova, were one of the most prominent political couples in Washington in the 1990s. Mrs. Gingrich says, “She told me the Justice Department suspected I was involved in arms dealing.” Ms. Toensing confirmed to the media in 2002 that her client did meet with Soghanalian in Paris, but she said that Mrs. Gingrich went only to help “Mr. Ash secure funding from Mr. Soghanalian…The only information she was given … was that he was a Mid-Eastern investor.” Toensing said Mrs. Gingrich knew nothing about the arms dealer’s background despite the fact that Soghanalian had been well known in Republican circles for years in Washington and Florida and had attended several Republican fundraisers that the Gingriches had also attended. In addition, Soghanalian had appeared on 60 Minutes and Nightline prior to the meeting in Paris.
According to Mrs. Gingrich, Toensing told the FBI that her client’s conversations with Soghanalian were “limited to obtaining funding for IEDC and trivial social conversation. Nothing more.” In a prepared statement for the media in 2002 Toensing wrote: “Mr. Soghanalian decided not to invest, and Ms. Gingrich never saw or talked with him again.” Mrs. Gingrich says that Toensing’s efforts to kill the investigation went all the way up to FBI Director Louis Freeh, who made the final decision. Toensing did not return several telephone calls for comment.
Soghanalian’s recollection was far different. He said that after Paris “they (Ash and Bennett) were calling me every day to see how I got along with Marianne.”
Soghanalian told the FBI that he said to Mrs. Gingrich “that Iraq owed me $54 million, and I asked her whether she, with the help of her husband, could get the United Nations embargo against Iraq lifted so I could be paid.” Soghanalian said he also asked her if her husband could help him win congressional backing for a scheme to build a high-speed train through Florida. “Ash had told me this is one of the deals I could invest in – she could help us through Newt,” Soghanalian said. The FBI 302s confirm Soghanalian’s account of this part of the conversation. Soghanalian said Mrs. Gingrich told him “that she could get congressional support for the train, but her organization needed money for investment.”
Marianne Gingrich says, “I was just trying to keep the conversation going about his potential investment. I may have been polite, but I don’t remember ever discussing the arms embargo…I would have never suggested he invest in high speed rail. It was something I knew about, and it was impractical and a poor investment.”
This statement contradicts an earlier account by Victoria Toensing, who said in the 2002 statement, “Neither Iraqi sanctions nor a Florida bullet train … were ever brought up.” The lawyer went on: “It is not unusual for con artists to make false claims about well-known people.”
In a recent interview Mrs. Gingrich did recall the discussion about the possible bullet train deal. “I was humoring him, making small talk,” she says. Despite what is on the FBI tapes, Waldman denied in interviews at the time that there was ever a direct discussion of Speaker Gingrich assisting Soghanalian in getting the UN Iraq embargo lifted in return for money. Waldman claimed he was simply trying to humor Soghanalian, since he was a potential donor to the Institute. Newt Gingrich told the FBI that he “only vaguely” recalled Waldman’s name. He said, “To the best of my knowledge, I never sent anyone anywhere on behalf of the Institute.” The investigation took place while Gingrich was under other unrelated congressional ethics investigations and in the middle of the Clinton impeachment proceedings.
Newt Gingrigh and third wife Callista.
A short time later, Newt and Marianne Gingrich separated and went through a contentious divorce. Gingrich resigned as House Speaker and from Congress in January 1999 and married a congressional aide with whom he was having an affair.
On the night of February 6, 2001, Gus Boulis – who had sold most of his interest in the SunCruz gambling ship venture to Adam Kidan, Jack Abramoff and Ben Waldman – was driving home from work when he was gunned down. It was a classic mob hit. Adam Kidan, whom Jack Abramoff had brought into the company with Waldman, had ties to two organized crime families and became an instant suspect. (He denies knowing anything about the death.) While Kidan and Abramoff served prison sentences connected to the SunCruz case, the Miami U.S. Attorney’s office did not bring charges against Waldman, who owned 10 percent of the company. Today he lives in suburban Washington and sells dental equipment. As Abramoff tells it in interviews about his new book, congressional corruption is commonplace. In the book’s acknowledgements, he thanks his “lifelong friend and partner Ben Waldman.”
Howard Ash is still active in penny stock investments and charitable organizations from Miami to South Africa to Croatia. He is involved with a long list of ever-changing companies from a Miami Beach house at 4233 Sheridan Avenue, including Claridge Management, Ashtine Holding Group, Associated Medical Billing, Biocard Corporation, Biorecord Corporation, CMM Consulting Medical Industries, Judaica International, Shesha Holdings Inc. and many others.
On the website Dealmakers, he is described as “a seasoned international businessman with experience in North America, Europe, Asia and Africa. In 1990, Howard co-founded Abrams, Ash & Associates, a Merchant Bank, and sold his shares in 1992. Since 1992 Howard has served as CEO, COO and CFO to a variety of high-profile, international companies, including Israel Export Development Corporation, CITA Americas, BioCard, Inc., and several publicly traded companies. Howard’s leadership provided development of business documents and corporate identity packages, business planning, strategy formation, web presence, operations and implementation, investment banking liaisons, and investor relations. Howard, a silent partner in Tudog Creative Business Consulting, leverages his extensive network of international contacts and international consulting firms to provide clients with the broadest and most effective services available.”
Morty Bennett says he is retired and loves living in West Virginia.FBI Gingrich Investigation
Just Two Degrees of Separation
By Jane Kaddouri
A new story is making the media rounds, reporting on a proposed 1997 FBI sting targeting GOP candidate Newt Gingrich. According to author Joseph Trento, Newt’s then-wife Marianne was soliciting bribes from an infamous arms dealer in exchange for Gingrich’s lifting of the U.S. embargo of Iraq.
The report details Marianne’s 1995 Paris meetings with arms dealer Sarkis Soghanalian—meetings also attended by Howard Ash, who had worked with Marianne at the Israel Export Development Company (IEDC).
While Marianne says she was meeting with Soghanalian not to negotiate a bribe for House Speaker Gingrich, but at the behest of her former boss at IEDC, who was seeking a donation from Soghanalian. The arms dealer, on the other hand, says he met Marianne through Miami car dealer Morty Bennett (also in attendance at the Paris meeting), who told him that Newt Gingrich could lift the Iraqi embargo “in exchange for a $10 million payment to Gingrich through his associates…[at] The Institute for Advanced Strategic & Political Studies (IASPS)”—where the same Howard Ash also served as a fundraiser.
And this is where it gets really interesting for us. Because you have to ask what kind of person would solicit a donation from a known arms dealer (he was profiled on “60 Minutes” the night before the Paris meeting). And we’re here to tell you. The CEO of IEDC at the time—and the Board Chair of IASPS—was none other than David Yerushalmi, the man behind the Islamophobia movement; the man who wanted turn adherence to Sharia into a felony crime.
The 2011 publication Fear, Inc., profiles Yerushalmi’s hatemongering in terrifying detail— from referring to African Americans as “the most murderous of people,” to his authorship of anti-Sharia legislation that’s being used as a model around the country.
Back in 2006, Yerushalmi wasn’t happy with Newt Gingrich—for the simple reason that Newt just wasn’t tough enough on Islam. Newt said that there were 5 challenges America had to meet in order to win the future, the first of which was “confronting a world in which America's enemies, including the irreconcilable wing of Islam and rogue dictatorships, could acquire and use nuclear or biological weapons.” Yerushalmi’s response was to ask if Newt was “articulating a future for America or for the ‘middle wing’ of the Republican Party and for control of Congress and the White House?” Either way, he concluded, Newt was just not his guy. “As much as I admired Newt Gingrich in 1994, and I had a special relationship with him through his former wife Marianne, I fear he is not the leader we await.”
Now that Newt is vying for control of the White House, he seems to be taking a page from Yerushalmi’s book of horrors. Far from the days of being a friend to the Muslim community, he’s now espousing legislation to combat the “spread of Sharia law.” He’s insisting that all Palestinians are terrorists. He mirrored Yerushalmi’s stance on Park 51. The new Newt seems a lot like the same old Yerushalmi—a similarity that’s becoming frighteningly clear.
New World Order Lobby Promoting Gingrich
By Michael Collins Piper -
Even though there was no evidence of it, the elite media announced that the presidential campaign of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich was picking up steam and gave his ambitions a critical boost. This was no surprise to those who know Gingrich has longstanding ties to powerful circles outside the realm of the grassroots voters.
In 1968, when conservatives were backing Richard Nixon or then-California Gov. Ronald Reagan for the GOP presidential nomination, Gingrich was a Southern campaign coordinator for liberal internationalist Gov. Nelson Rockefeller of New York.
Although Gingrich now touts himself as a conservative, he remains a fervent New World Order globalist and a longtime advocate of U.S.military adventurism abroad and destructive so-called free trade policies. In fact, it was Gingrich who helped railroad the discredited North American Free Trade Agreement through Congress.
A member of the Rockefeller-financed Council on Foreign Relations, the New York affiliate of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, the policy apparatus of the Rothschild banking empire, Gingrich is particularly close to hard-line pro-Israeli forces on American soil.
One of his chief foreign policy advisors is Ilan Berman, editor of the journal of the Jewish Institute for National SecurityAffairs (JINSA), the U.S.-based operation said by Prof. Edward Hermann of the University of Pennsylvania to be a “virtual agency of the Israeli government.”
Best known for its front-line role through its assets in the George W. Bush administration in misdirecting the United States into the debacle in Iraq and now continuing to clamor for war against Iran, JINSA has had several of its key figures—including JINSA’s founder, Stephen Bryen, and his close associates Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz—investigated by the FBI on suspicion of conducting espionage for Israel.
Gingrich—who has overseen a network of political enterprises that have brought an estimated $100 million into his coffers since he left Congress—has been favored by one donor in particular: Las Vegas gambling tycoon Sheldon Adelson, a devoted supporter of Israel, who once described himself as “the richest Jew in the world.” This modern incarnation of crime boss Meyer Lansky bankrolled Gingrich to the tune of at least $6 million.
While in Congress, Gingrich benefited from the activities of his (second) wife, Marianne, then on the payroll of the Israel Export Development Company (IEDCO), promoting the importation of Israeli products into the United States—even as Gingrich used his influence in Congress to advance U.S.-Israeli trade.
IEDCO was the brainchild of Larry Silverstein, the billionaire owner of the World Trade Center towers at the time of the 9-11 tragedy, best known for urging, “pull it”—in reference to the trade center’s Building 7, which was deliberately imploded—as 9-11 researchers have documented relentlessly.
Silverstein even admitted to The Wall Street Journal that Gingrich was one of a number in Congress who lobbied to support Silverstein’s ventures. This happened at a time when Gingrich’s wife was on Silverstein’s payroll.
Mrs. Gingrich’s IDECO deal was cut in 1994 after she and Newt traveled to Israel at the expense of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a lobby for Israel.
Although she took home a monthly salary of $2,500, plus “commissions,” Mrs. Gingrich refused to disclose the size of those commissions. The sums she received are of the level seen in many bribery scandals.
On Jan. 25, 1985, a front-page story in The Spotlight unmasked Gingrich—then a little-known junior House member and the leader of a clique of Republicans, the Conservative Opportunity Society (COS)—as the driving force behind a scheme to scrap the GOP’s historic nationalist stance on foreign policy.
The Spotlight revealed that Gingrich and several other COS members—including then-Rep. Vin Weber (R-Minn.)— had attended a secret meeting with Donald Graham, publisher of The Washington Post, at which Gingrich and the COS agreed to use their influence to push the GOP into the internationalist camp. In return, the Post’s power-wielders promised to give Gingrich and his collaborators wide and favorable publicity. Until then, the media had relegated Gingrich and company to backbench status, painted as extremists.
Gingrich told the Post the COS would—and they did—call for sanctions against white-ruled South Africa, a reversal of the traditional conservative stand, a move that helped bring down that government and which resulted in South Africa turning its nuclear arsenal over to Israel—a little-known secret then and now.
Soon—as promised—the Post published a laudatory profile of Gingrich, one of many future puff pieces.
Then, Gingrich’s colleague, Weber, authored a Post column openly calling for the GOP to become “America’s new internationalist party.”
The Spotlight was shouted down by conservatives hoodwinked by the big media into following Gingrich’s brand of “leadership.” Ultimately, however, the secret Post-Gingrich meeting was confirmed by the Post—but only after Gingrich had reached a position of influence. The Spotlight’s “conspiracy theory”—as some called it— proved to be a conspiracy fact.
On Sept. 3, 1995 the Post pointed out that “for the ultra-right, Gingrich is just a tool of the world government plot.” The Post said “anyone who glances at The Spotlight . . . knows . . . Gingrich is hardly the leader of their movement; in their eyes, he is [subverting] it.”
According to the Post: “Those with a paranoid bent are convinced that the Georgian is in cahoots with President Clinton, the Rockefellers, the Freemasons, the Council on Foreign Relations and the entire eastern establishment to abrogate the Constitution and forge a New World Order under the thumb of Jewish central bankers and the UN.”
More than a decade later, that sarcastic assessment of Gingrich stands perhaps more true than ever.
——
Michael Collins Piper is a world-renowned author, journalist, lecturer and radio show host. He has spoken in Russia, Malaysia, Iran, Abu Dhabi, Japan, Canada and, of course, the United States. He is the author of Final Judgment, The New Jerusalem, The High Priests of War, Dirty Secrets, My First Days in the White House, The New Babylon, The Judas Goats: The Enemy Within, Target: Traficant, The Golem: Israel’s Nuclear Hell Bomb and The Confessions of an Anti-Semite. You can order any of these books with a credit card by calling AFP/FAB toll free at 1-888-699-6397 or calling FAB direct at 202- 547-5585 to inquire about pricing and S&H fees.
Michael Collins Piper is a world-renowned author, journalist, lecturer and radio show host. He has spoken in Russia, Malaysia, Iran, Abu Dhabi, Japan, Canada and, of course, the United States. He is the author of Final Judgment, The New Jerusalem, The High Priests of War, Dirty Secrets, My First Days in the White House, The New Babylon, The Judas Goats: The Enemy Within, Target: Traficant, The Golem: Israel’s Nuclear Hell Bomb and The Confessions of an Anti-Semite. You can order any of these books with a credit card by calling AFP/FAB toll free at 1-888-699-6397 or calling FAB direct at 202- 547-5585 to inquire about pricing and S&H fees.
 | .American Free Press |
| .Vol XI .#13 March 21, 2011 americanfreepress.net | |
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Page 10, AMERICAN FREE PRESS * March 28, 2011 *
Issue 13 * AMERICAN FREE PRESS * AFP ON THE CANDIDATES
9-11 Links,
Big Money Swirl
Around Newt
Issue 13 * AMERICAN FREE PRESS * AFP ON THE CANDIDATES
9-11 Links,
Big Money Swirl
Around Newt
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INTERNATIONALIST AT HEART
Going back as far as 25 years, evidence was emerging that suggested that Gingrich was not the kind of Republican that could be considered “traditional.” A front-page exclusive published in the Jan. 28, 1985 issue of The Spotlight revealed that, while he was then a little known junior member of the House of Representatives, Gingrich was the brains behind a clique of internationalist Republicans who were working to scrap the GOP’s historic nationalist stance in foreign policy making. Unfortunately, this honest effort to expose Gingrich’s internationalist bent was greeted with a mixture of outrage and scorn by many conservatives, who were hoodwinked by the mainstream media into following the Georgia congressman’s peculiar brand of “leadership.” Gingrich and his fellow GOP lawmakers dubbed themselves the Conservative Opportunity Society (COS).
GINGRICH THE CENTRIST
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(Issue #13, March 28, 2011, AMERICAN FREE PRESS)
 | .American Free Press |
| ...Volume VI. #6. February 6, 2006..americanfreepress.net | |
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By Michael Collins Piper |
In the wake of the growing scandal surrounding the sleazy activities of disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, a longtime Republican Party activist and promoter of Israel’s interests, the major media has been touting two unlikely Republican advocates for “reform”: former GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.)
However, a careful review of the records of both Gingrich and McCain indicates that they can hardly be counted upon to bring genuine reform to curtail the domination of Congress by special interest lobbies.
Take the case of the former House speaker. While serving in Congress and talking about cost-cutting, he once declared that U.S. foreign aid to Israel was one of the areas that no cost-cutting was possible and that, quite the contrary, required additional funding from tax-burdened Americans.
However, a careful review of the records of both Gingrich and McCain indicates that they can hardly be counted upon to bring genuine reform to curtail the domination of Congress by special interest lobbies.
Take the case of the former House speaker. While serving in Congress and talking about cost-cutting, he once declared that U.S. foreign aid to Israel was one of the areas that no cost-cutting was possible and that, quite the contrary, required additional funding from tax-burdened Americans.
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In addition, while Gingrich was busy on Capitol Hill carrying water for Israeli interests, his then-wife Marianne was on the payroll of the Israel Export Development Company (IDECO), which was promoting the financial interests of Israel vis-à-vis lucrative trade agreements with the U.S.
Mrs. Gingrich’s lucrative deal with IDECO was cut in August 1994 after she and her husband traveled to Israel at the expense of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). AIPAC is the foreign lobby for Israel that, even as this is written, has been embarrassed by the criminal indictment of two of its top lobbyists on charges of suspected espionage on behalf of Israel.
At the time it was first revealed that Mrs. Gingrich was taking home a monthly stipend of $2,500 plus “commissions” from the Israeli corporate operation. However, Mrs. Gingrich has refused to disclose the size of those “commissions.”
Mrs. Gingrich has responded to criticisms of her sweet deal by saying “If I were going to get a political payoff, it would not be for the amount of money I am making." However, the fact is, the yearly figure of $30,000 is precisely the kind of figures often seen linked to political payoffs. And what is interesting is that IEDCO president Larry Silverstein admitted to The Wall Street Journal that Gingrich was one of a number of members of Congress who were lobbied to support his company’s proposal.
Mrs. Gingrich’s Israeli connection was obviously an egregious conflict of interest for Gingrich, but the congressman’s friends in high places saw no problem — since “our ally Israel” was involved. Imagine the ruckus if Mrs. Gingrich had been working for Arab interests.
As for so-called “reformer” John McCain, his track record is not so much more attractive. Following the 2002 elections, when campaign finance reform legislation — shepherded into law by McCain and Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) — went into effect, the New York-based weekly newspaper Forward, the most influential voice of the pro-Israel lobby in America, bragged in its first post-election edition that “Jewish interest groups may be the big winners” under the vaunted McCain- Feingold campaign finance measures. Forward asserted flatly:
Mrs. Gingrich’s lucrative deal with IDECO was cut in August 1994 after she and her husband traveled to Israel at the expense of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). AIPAC is the foreign lobby for Israel that, even as this is written, has been embarrassed by the criminal indictment of two of its top lobbyists on charges of suspected espionage on behalf of Israel.
At the time it was first revealed that Mrs. Gingrich was taking home a monthly stipend of $2,500 plus “commissions” from the Israeli corporate operation. However, Mrs. Gingrich has refused to disclose the size of those “commissions.”
Mrs. Gingrich has responded to criticisms of her sweet deal by saying “If I were going to get a political payoff, it would not be for the amount of money I am making." However, the fact is, the yearly figure of $30,000 is precisely the kind of figures often seen linked to political payoffs. And what is interesting is that IEDCO president Larry Silverstein admitted to The Wall Street Journal that Gingrich was one of a number of members of Congress who were lobbied to support his company’s proposal.
Mrs. Gingrich’s Israeli connection was obviously an egregious conflict of interest for Gingrich, but the congressman’s friends in high places saw no problem — since “our ally Israel” was involved. Imagine the ruckus if Mrs. Gingrich had been working for Arab interests.
As for so-called “reformer” John McCain, his track record is not so much more attractive. Following the 2002 elections, when campaign finance reform legislation — shepherded into law by McCain and Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) — went into effect, the New York-based weekly newspaper Forward, the most influential voice of the pro-Israel lobby in America, bragged in its first post-election edition that “Jewish interest groups may be the big winners” under the vaunted McCain- Feingold campaign finance measures. Forward asserted flatly:
Political hands say groups such as the Republican Jewish Coalition and its counterpart, the National Jewish Democratic Council, not-for-profits unaffected by the ban on “soft money” for political campaigns, are poised to be big beneficiaries of the new [campaign finance legislation] regime.
In fact, under the McCain-Feingold “reform” measure, the new strength in organized Jewish political power would come at the expense of corporations, labor unions and other interest groups — and wealthy individuals, too — who were previously exempt from regular limits on campaign contributions if their funds were donated directly to national party organizations for “party building,” voter drives and issues advertisements.
Under the new law only so-called “issues” groups such as the aforementioned Jewish organizations would not be subject to limits. Forward pointed out:
Under the new law only so-called “issues” groups such as the aforementioned Jewish organizations would not be subject to limits. Forward pointed out:
As long as the groups are independent of the parties and candidates do not “coordinate” their activities with them, their contributions remain unrestricted.
What this means is that a wide-ranging number of political action committees focused on Israel interests can now spend unlimited amounts of money working to elect or defeat candidates.
Although top Jewish organizations such as the Anti- Defamation League (ADL) of B’nai B’rith and AIPAC target offending politicians for destruction, these organizations do not formally involve themselves in election campaigns or donate money to political figures.
However, it is an “open secret” that dozens of other Jewish political organizations rely on “a wink and a nod” from the ADL and AIPAC to determine whom they should support or oppose financially.
Anyone familiar with the history and record of McCain would not be surprised that McCain should be the one responsible for enacting such unfair and biased legislation
designed to benefit the political power of the pro-Israel lobby. In fact, McCain owes his entire career to the indirect sponsorship of the powerful organized-crime-enriched family of billionaire Edgar Bronfman, head of the World Jewish Congress. McCain’s chief backer in Arizona politics, Kemper Marley, was a front man for the Bronfman family, and McCain’s own family beer distribution fortune came through this connection.
In addition, much of McCain’s own campaign money has come from a clique of groups and individuals all of whom have close ties to the Israeli lobby, including: organized crime-linked gambling interests in Las Vegas, international bankers such as Goldman Sachs and Hollywood figures such as the late mob-linked Lew Wasserman.
It will also be remembered that McCain’s father, the late Adm. John McCain, was a key player in the official U.S. government cover-up of Israel’s murder of 34 American sailors aboard the USS Liberty on June 8, 1967.
Although top Jewish organizations such as the Anti- Defamation League (ADL) of B’nai B’rith and AIPAC target offending politicians for destruction, these organizations do not formally involve themselves in election campaigns or donate money to political figures.
However, it is an “open secret” that dozens of other Jewish political organizations rely on “a wink and a nod” from the ADL and AIPAC to determine whom they should support or oppose financially.
Anyone familiar with the history and record of McCain would not be surprised that McCain should be the one responsible for enacting such unfair and biased legislation
designed to benefit the political power of the pro-Israel lobby. In fact, McCain owes his entire career to the indirect sponsorship of the powerful organized-crime-enriched family of billionaire Edgar Bronfman, head of the World Jewish Congress. McCain’s chief backer in Arizona politics, Kemper Marley, was a front man for the Bronfman family, and McCain’s own family beer distribution fortune came through this connection.
In addition, much of McCain’s own campaign money has come from a clique of groups and individuals all of whom have close ties to the Israeli lobby, including: organized crime-linked gambling interests in Las Vegas, international bankers such as Goldman Sachs and Hollywood figures such as the late mob-linked Lew Wasserman.
It will also be remembered that McCain’s father, the late Adm. John McCain, was a key player in the official U.S. government cover-up of Israel’s murder of 34 American sailors aboard the USS Liberty on June 8, 1967.
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(Issue #7, February 6, 2006, American Free Press)
Newt Gingrich ou la voix de son maître sioniste - Sheldon Adelson: Les poches profondes qui sont derrière Newt Gingrich
Newt Gingrich ou la voix de son maître sioniste - Sheldon Adelson: Les poches profondes qui sont derrière Newt Gingrich
par Eli Clifton, Think Progress (USA) le 21 décembre 2011 traduit de l’anglais par Djazaïri
Le financement qui est derrière Newt Gingrich etAmerican Solutions for Winning the Future, son comité politique indépendant, est l’occasion d’une plongée fascinante dans les profondeurs des poches qui soutiennent la candidature de Gingrich. Cette semaine, McClatchy a révélé qu’American Solutions avait réglé la note de 8 millions de dollars de location de jets privés à l’époque où Gingrich réfléchissait à son entrée dans les compétitions présidentielles de 2008 et 2012.
Le milliardaire des jeux de casino Sheldon Adelson était le plus important financier d’American Solutions avec une contribution de 7,65 millions de dollars, la rumeur étant qu’il avait engagé 20 millions de dollars en faveur d’un super PAC (comité d’action politique) pro-Gingrich, rumeur démentie par un porte parole d’Adelson. Quoi qu’il en soit, les faits montrent de manière de plus en plus nette que le patron de casion milliardaire est une pièce centrale de la carrière politique de Newt Gingrich.
L’entreprise Sands Corporation dirigée par Sheldon Adelson est basée à Las Vegas mais a des intérêts politiques et commerciaux à Macao, en Chine et en Israël. En Israël, l’importance d’Adelson tient à sa relation d’amitié proche avec le premier ministre Israélien Benjamin Netanyahou et au journal gratuit Israel Hayom dont il est le propriétaire et qui soutient le parti du Likoud. Pour en revenir aux Etats Unis, Adelson siège au conseil d’administration de la Republican Jewish Coalition et ne cache pas ses vues sur le conflit israélo-palestinien. Pendant la présidence de George W. Bush, Adelson s’était opposé aux efforts de relance des discussions de paix entre Israéliens et Palestiniens et était même allé à l’encontre de l’influent American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) quand cette organisation avait soutenu les discussions de paix. « Je ne continue pas à soutenir des organisations qui aident des amis à se suicider simplement parce qu’ils disent qu’ils veulent faire le grand saut, » avait déclaré Adelson à la Jewish Telegraph Agency.
Gingrich, qui a qualifié le 10 décembre les Palestiniens de “terroristes” pendant un débat du parti Républicain et a déclaré à Jewish Channel que les palestiniens sont un peuple « inventé », semble faire écho à la ligne dure adoptée avant lui par son bienfaiteur plein aux as.
“Sheldon a toujours aimé Newt. Il est resté avec lui tout le temps, » a déclaré Fred Zeidman, un ami d’Adelson et un membre important de la communauté juive américaine qui soutient Mitt Romney, à Aram Roston du Daily Beast. « Il est resté avec lui quand il était dans l’ornière. Newt, je pense, reflète bien l’état d’esprit de Sheldon. Particulièrement au sujet d’Israël.”
Si Adelson et Gingrich semblent partager le même agenda de droite pour le Moyen Orient, les affaires du magnat des casinos en Chine se sont avérées politiquement gênantes au pays. Adelson aurait aidé à faire échouer au Congrès une mesure d’opposition à la candidature de Pékin aux jeux olympiques proposée par des Républicains de la chambre des Représentants. «La proposition d eloi ne verra jamais le jour, M. le maire. Ne vous inquiétez pas pour ça, » aurait-il dit au maire de Pékin et 2001 après avoir téléphoné à Tom Delay, le chef de la majorité à la Chambre des Représentants. Par la suite, Sands Corporation obtint une lucrative licence de casino par le gouvernement chinois, ce qui lui permit de commencer un développement massif dans la Macau Special Administrative Region (SAR).
Réagissant à l’étroitesse des relations d’affaires d’Adelson avec le gouvernement chinois, le président de la Christian Coalition of Alabama, le Dr Randy Brinson, avait dénoncé Adelson qui « ne partage pas nos valeurs. » « Les endroits où Sheldon Adelson a placé son argent dit clairement où son cœur balance : vers le jeu d’argent et le soutien au régime chinois qui persécute les Chrétiens, » avait-il dit.
Gingrich va se retrouver devant ses propres difficultés à persuader les Chrétiens évangéliques troublés par ses multiples mariages et liaisons extraconjugales, de soutenir sa candidat
ure. Mais la présence affichée de Sheldon Adelson dans le camp de Gingrich pourrait s’avérer être un obstacle de plus dans la conquête de le très importante droite chrétienne.
ure. Mais la présence affichée de Sheldon Adelson dans le camp de Gingrich pourrait s’avérer être un obstacle de plus dans la conquête de le très importante droite chrétienne.