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Categories: Honest and Ethical Government, National Security, Media Accountability
This is the same CNN that has recently placed the former director of Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition, Ralph Reed behind a CNN news desk as a news analyst.
Such realizations were simultaneously odd and seemingly unrelated, until I looked closer at "Honest" John McCain, Candidate for President of the United States of America.
As chairman of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, John McCain directed the Congressional investigation of the Indian gaming scandal which stole over $80 million from American Indian Tribes. The scandal led to the imprisonment of Lobbyist Jack Abramoff, Congressman Bob Ney (R-OH), and a number of other lobbyists and federal officials, yet some people criticized McCain for failing to call people like Ralph Reed (who were at the center of the scam) before the committee to testify.
As a result of this investigation, McCain refers to himself as an "agent of change," yet he limited the scope of the gaming investigation to lobbyists' improper gifts. Now if the lobbyists were guilty of giving improper gifts, trips and money, a natural follow-up question for McCain could have been, "who received those gifts?" Why were members of Congress not investigated? Why wasn't Ralph Reed brought before the McCain investigation? After all, wasn't he paid $4 million to shut down an Indian casino by Reed's friend and convicted felon, Jack Abramoff.
Maybe Ralph Reed will raise such questions to McCain as a news analyst for "the most trusted name in news," CNN.
As I tried to answer my own questions, I found that McCains' reluctance to get to the bottom of the scandal is predictable, especially in light of how McCain has financed his political career.
It is shocking...shocking I tell you that we haven't learned about McCain's past by CNN's Reed who was saved by McCain's inept investigation. The former director of the Christian Coalition's actions to “oppose gambling” -- at the self-sacrifice of taking $4 million form Abramoff -- robbed the Tiguas (Native) people of their gambling enterprise, while Reed flaunted his moral superiority to shutting down another sinful gambling house.
Some Christians have to carry such heavy burdens.
Inept investigations of national importance seems to be a McCain family tradition. Senator McCain's father, Admiral John McCain Jr. was a four-star Commander-in-Chief of the US naval forces in Europe who convened a court of inquiry to investigate all pertinent facts and circumstances leading to and connected with the attack on the USS Liberty.
Adm. John McCain Jr. led the investigation, and gave subordinates one week to conduct an investigation that normally would have been allotted a minimum of six months, and found the attack to be a case of "mistaken identity." The report, which focused on the performance of the crew and the adequacy of communications, and which excluded critical testimony from crew members, is the keystone in Israel partisans' claims that the attack was accidental. All other US reviews of the attack that state it was accidental cite this investigation as their source.
In Alison Weir's article, American Media Misses the Boat, she reports on a little known event that may make sense of the McCain family's role in history.
“In October 2003, an independent, blue-ribbon commission released its findings from an investigation into an internationally significant attack on a US Navy ship that left more than 200 American sailors killed or wounded...
“The results of its investigation can be read in the Congressional Record:
"'Findings of the Independent Commission of Inquiry into the Israeli Attack on the USS Liberty, the Recall of Military Rescue Support Aircraft while the Ship was Under Attack, and the Subsequent Cover-up by the United States Government.'
"Yet only an infinitesimal fraction of the American citizenry has any idea that a commission made up of some of the nation's most respected military leaders stated publicly and forcefully --on Capitol Hill --that a US president chose to sacrifice US interests and US servicemen (specifically, the 25 of the 34 dead who were killed after US rescue missions were recalled) to Israeli interests, and then ordered a cover-up of his actions.
“Almost no one knows that the US's purported "special" ally tried to sink a Navy ship, and then quibbled for years over what it would pay in compensation to the widows, children, and parents of those it killed and to the United States for the ship it destroyed. (Thirteen years after the attack, it grudgingly paid $6 million for a ship valued at $40 million.)
“The one piece of this story that did make it into the mainstream media has also remained astonishingly buried: testimony that provided the final nail in the coffin of claims that the Israeli attack --which lasted for hours; consisted of rockets, napalm, and torpedoes; and killed 34 Americans total and injured over 170 --was somehow accidental.
“This testimony, which was read at the Capitol Hill event, was by Captain Ward Boston, the chief counsel to the one US government investigation ever undertaken of this attack, the Naval Court of Inquiry.
“In his testimony, Boston stated that he had decided to end his 30-year silence and was going to expose the truth: the Court of Inquiry conclusions had been a sham. President Lyndon Johnson and his secretary of defense, Robert McNamara, had ordered the court to cover up the fact that all the evidence had indicated clearly that the attack had been intentional.”
Could Admiral John S. McCain Jr. have been rewarded for his loyal service (to Israel) by suppressing the truth about our own government's cover-up of Israel's vicious attack On the USS Liberty? Did Daddy McCain negotiate to rescue his son, John McCain III from the POW camp in Hanoi, while many of his fellow US Vietnam Veterans still wait for their rescue? And if so, what, if anything did McCain III have to promise?
Like the Indian gaming scandal, Senator McCain's "investigation" of missing American servicemen in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia in 1991-1993, was also “inept.” For some reason, McCain ridiculed a satellite photo taken in 1988 that showed what Department of Defense (DOD) experts testified was a valid, classified United States military Pilot Distress code in a dry rice paddy in Sam Neua Province, Laos.
According to DOD documents cited in the 2007 New York Times bestseller - An Enormous Crime - those DOD experts testified that each of the letters in the "USA" were 12 feet tall and together the 3 letters stretched 37 feet across the dry paddy, and the highly classified "Walking K" Escape and Evasion symbol beneath the "USA" was 24 feet tall and 19 feet across. DOD experts told you that this "USA Walking K" pilot distress code "must be considered valid until proven otherwise."
Despite the expert testimony - and the fact that roughly 90 independent intelligence sources had reported the presence of American POWs in Sam Neua Province after the Vietnam War; that a radio intercept had told of US POWs in the province; and that a different satellite photo - also taken in 1988 - had shown the name of a US pilot laid out beside a trail near where the "USA Walking K" was seen in the rice paddy. Despite that, McCain declared in his 2002 memoir - Worth The Fighting For - that the "USA Walking K" pilot distress code was not a plea for rescue as the DOD experts said, but instead was "a young Laotian boy's handiwork that he had copied off an envelope."
For whatever reason, the McCain's have been repeatedly tested to keep their secrets, which is the way of many “family businesses.”
In John McCain's biography, he lists one of his occupations as a beer distributor. He came into that business through marrying Jim Hensley's daughter Cindy. According to Charles Lewis of the Center for Public Integrity, “the Hensleys were key contributors of his political career.” McCain's late father-in-law, Jim Hensley was the owner of the biggest Anheuser-Busch beer distributors in the nation, but it is the origins of the Hensley fortune which again casts a shadow over McCain.
Jim Hensley got his start as a henchmen for Kemper Marley, which was the behind the scenes politial boss and Lansky crime family's top man of Arizona. Marley built up a liquor distribution monopoly in Arizona, but in 1948, 52 employees of Marley's went to jail for federal liquor violations, including Jim Hensley. Some people say that for payment for his loyalty, Kemper Marley set him up in the beer distribution business, which is now worth $200 million and has helped to finance McCain's political career. The Las Vegas Gambling industry is also among McCain's primary financial backers.
Of course, John McCain himself can not be held accountable for the sins of his father-in-law, but the fact is, that this “reformer” owes his political and financial fortunes to some of the biggest names in organized crime.
That way perhaps, they can keep the secrets, money, power, and investigative authority all in the family.
