Reply #36: Jackson Stephens (Clinton's connection w BFEE who b(r)ought him from obscurity :

[mod mom]

Jackson Stephens rivals Bath in his role as conduit between high-level factions. A Little Rock, Arkansas tycoon who attended the U.S. Naval Academy with Jimmy Carter and staked Sam Walton to found Wal-Mart in 1970, Stephens was owner of the notoriously toxic WTI Incinerator in East Liverpool, OH, and a munificent contributor to the campaign warchests of both Bill Clinton and George Bush, Sr. He was also embroiled in the BCCI affair through his association with BCCI satellite Union Bank of Switzerland—UBS, in turn, contributed $25 million to the moribund Harken Energy Corp.

http://www.wburg.com/0202/arts/lombardi.html

East Liverpool Incinerator -The WTI incinerator burns about 70,000 tons of hazardous waste each year, just 320 feet from the nearest house, and built on a flood plain.



The Principal Player

Stephens Inc., operating through a subsidiary named Waste Technologies, Inc. (WTI), was one of the original partners in Waste Technologies Industries (also abbreviated, confusingly and perhaps not coincidentally, WTI), which built the East Liverpool incinerator.

There has always been something incongruous about Stephens Inc. Despite the Little rock firm's attempts to portray itself as a small-city operation that closes for the duck season and got fabulously lucky on a couple of down-home deals like Wal-Mart, it was, at the incinerator's inception, the ninth-largest investment bank in the country. Since it is not headquartered in New York, its dealings are local news, little noticed by the national press, even when they have national implications. And, as a source close to the company once remarked, "The farther you get from Arkansas, the better it looks."

Stephens Inc. was founded by Witt Stephens, a state legislator's son who parlayed a Depression-era belt-buckle, Bible, and municipal-bond business into an immense personal fortune. After his retirement in 1973, the company was run by his shy younger brother, Jackson (a classmate of Jimmy Carter's at the Naval Academy). Witt Stephens and Stephens Inc. did much to create the economic paradox that is modern Arkansas: a desperately poor state with a scant 2.3 million inhabitants that is nonetheless home to a number of wealthy companies. Without the financial assistance of the Stephens brothers, Sam Walton might have ended his days as the most innovative merchant in Bentonville. Stephens money was also important to the fortunes of enterprises as various as Tyson Foods and Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, the television producer and reigning First Friend. Stephens Inc. is an important client of the Rose law firm, whose chairman, C. Joseph Giroir, made Hillary Rodham Clinton a partner. And back in 1977, Stephens assisted BCCI's infiltration of the American banking system by brokering the latter's purchase of National Bank of Georgia stock held by Bert Lance, former President Jimmy Carter's friend and disgraced budget director.

Jackson Stephens (who turned over the reins to his son, Warren, in the late eighties) and his firm were both substantial contributors to the campaigns of Presidents Reagan and Bush (to the tune of at least $100,000 in 1980 and 1989), but they have been closer still to Bill Clinton (whom Witt Stephens had been known to call "that boy").

On two occasions, once when Clinton was running for reelection in Arkansas in 1990 and again in March 1992, when his battered presidential campaign was broke, the Stephens family saved Clinton's bacon with an infusion of money. Indeed, it may not be too much to say that their Worthen Bank's emergency $3.5 million line of credit saved the presidential campaign from extinction. --L.J.D.

-snip

http://www.ohiocitizen.org/campaigns/wti/motherjones.html
HERE'S A PIECE FROM DAILY KOS ON HOW THE CLINTON(S) REPAID THEIR FRIEND JACKSON STEPHENS:


Ask Hillary About This Tonight. I Dare You.
by Zwoof

Thu Jan 31, 2008 at 03:40:46 AM PST

-snip

While I was writing the original piece on the history of this foul project, a new ruling from the Ohio EPA allowed this incinerator, located 1,100 feet from an elementary school, to accept even more hazardous waste (anthrax, radioactive waste, infectious medical waste and mixed hazardous waste from Hurricane Katrina) than the original permit that was shrouded in corruption and approved by the Clinton Administration

Clinton and Al Gore promised the residents of East Liverpool, Ohio that they would not allow this incinerator originally approved by Bush '41 to operate. However, a Clinton EPA appointee, recommended by his classmate Hillary Clinton, approved the permit.

This is a tangled tale of corporatism, broken promises and an environmental disaster waiting to happen.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/1/31/21045/9822/688/446786