you want to find out just who the Clintons are aligned with research their ties to JACKSON STEPHENS (Bush/Clinton/BCCI financier):
Perhaps we should start by asking shy Arkansas billionaire Jackson T. Stephens. After all, Stephens introduced BCCI from Pakistan to the United States and the WTI waste incinerator to East Liverpool, Ohio. Stephens would be a good sketch artist because he's seen some monstrous scandals in his day. Stephens' family firm is the largest privately owned investment bank outside Wall Street. In September 1977, President Jimmy Carter's Budget Director Burt Lance was forced to resign amid allegations about his bank dealings with Stephens (Stephens and Carter were classmates at the Naval Academy). In 1978, Stephens, Lance and BCCI were charged with violating U.S. security laws. The charges were dropped after the defendants promised not to violate security laws in the future, even though they admitted no guilt.
The New York Post reported in February 1992 that it was Stephens who enabled BCCI to gain a foothold in the U.S. and helped the fraud-plagued bank secretly acquire U.S. banks. In Peter Truell and Larry Gurwin's book, False Profits, perhaps the best account of the BCCI scandal, the authors outlined how opium revenue from Afghanistan Mujahedin fighting the Soviets ended up in the accounts of BCCI, founded by Agha Hasan Abedi. The Post reported that Stephens allegedly introduced Abedi to Lance shortly after Lance resigned.
In 1991, Lance testified that he urged Abedi to acquire a Washington bank holding company, but he denied any knowledge of BCCI's subsequent secret ownership of First American Bankshares. The Post reported that Securities and Exchange Commission documents from 1977 substantiate that the idea originated with Stephens.
During Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential run, Stephens and his son Warren boasted of raising more than $100,000 for the campaign. The Stephens family also owned a 38 percent share in Worthen National Bank that extended a crucial $2 million line of credit to Clinton in January 1992.
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http://www.ohiocitizen.org/campaigns/wti/bob.html RESEARCH MARK PENN (CLINTON'S CHIEF STRATEGIST):
Similarly, after Blackwater USA security guards killed 8 Iraqi civilians, the company turned to BKSH, a subsidiary of Penn's Burson-Marsteller, for strategic advice on how to minimize the negative impact of dealing with Congressional inquires.
Such conflicts only touch the surface. For the media, Burson-Marsteller and its affiliated companies could easily become a full-time beat pumping out a cascade of additional stories:
* The creation of such seemingly innocuous organizations as the National Smokers Alliance, European Women for HPV Testing, and the Coalition for Clean and Renewable Energy - organizations which are in fact the creation of corporations seeking to win lucrative support for contentious fights over smoking in public places, the promotion of highly-remunerative testing for a sexually transmitted human papilloma virus, and the expansion of nuclear power facilities.
* The laundry list of controversial Burson-Marsteller -- and its subsidiary BKSH -- clients includes US Smokeless (i.e., chewing) Tobacco, Johnnie Walker (distilled spirits), Morongo Casino Resort & Spa (gambling), Lockheed Martin (weapons), and Chevron Texaco (oil/gas) and Bristol Myers Squibb, GlaxoSmithKline, and Wyeth/Amgen (pharmaceutical).
* Penn's work for BOTOX, as described on his firm's website, sharply contradict Clinton's feminist commitments and ironically clash with her particularly strong support among older women:
"Burson-Marsteller worked to redefine the BOTOX image to speak to its benefits, drive a relationship with potential end users, minimize safety concerns and reflect its flexibility. Among the critical issues that needed to be addressed were consumers' perceptions regarding the side effects and toxicity of BOTOX Cosmetic....A multimedia initiative targeted key print, broadcast and online media outlets in top U.S. markets, and physician "key opinion leaders" conveyed scientific messages that provided objective, independent thought. The campaign resulted in more than 743 million positive media impressions for the BOTOX brand. Among prescription products, these results are second only to the benchmark launch of Viagra. In the first nine months of 2002, sales increased $90.3 million over the same period in the previous year. Media highlights include coverage in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, USA Today, Newsweek (cover story), Time, Associated Press, Reuters, Dow Jones, Bloomberg and UPI. The BOTOX brand was also featured in stories on "Good Morning America," "Today Show," "CBS Early Show," ABC, CBS, FOX CNBC, CNN, CNNfn, Fox News Channel and MSNBC.
* An equally controversial list of foreign clients including the Pakistan People's Party, Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, Colombia, Armenia, and Greece.
From the point of view of any news organization, Mark Penn, who has evolved from a relatively obscure Bill Clinton pollster into the helmsman of the Hillary Clinton campaign, is a walking, talking target -- an over-the-top example of the seductions of Washington, a lethal combination of political opportunism and corporate profiteering.
At this late stage of the campaign, it should come as little surprise that his top position in Hillary Clinton's enterprise would be used to question her campaign's judgment. A succinct portrait of Penn's liabilities was published as early as a year ago by the Washington Post in this relationship map:
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/02/29/mark-penn-ties... ASK YOURSELF WHY BILL CLINTON WOULD SELL OUT THE INTEGRITY OF FOREIGN ELECTIONS TO A KNOWN OPPRESSIVE TYRANT:
After Mining Deal, Financier Donated to Clinton
By JO BECKER and DON VAN NATTA Jr.
Published: January 31, 2008
Late on Sept. 6, 2005, a private plane carrying the Canadian mining financier Frank Giustra touched down in Almaty, a ruggedly picturesque city in southeast Kazakhstan. Several hundred miles to the west a fortune awaited: highly coveted deposits of uranium that could fuel nuclear reactors around the world. And Mr. Giustra was in hot pursuit of an exclusive deal to tap them.
Unlike more established competitors, Mr. Giustra was a newcomer to uranium mining in Kazakhstan, a former Soviet republic. But what his fledgling company lacked in experience, it made up for in connections. Accompanying Mr. Giustra on his luxuriously appointed MD-87 jet that day was a former president of the United States, Bill Clinton.
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"Kazakhstan’s president, Nursultan A. Nazarbayev, whose 19-year stranglehold on the country has all but quashed political dissent."
"Mr. Nazarbayev walked away from the table with a propaganda coup, after Mr. Clinton expressed enthusiastic support for the Kazakh leader’s bid to head an international organization that monitors elections and supports democracy."
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Just months after the Kazakh pact was finalized, Mr. Clinton’s charitable foundation received its own windfall: a $31.3 million donation from Mr. Giustra that had remained a secret until he acknowledged it last month. The gift, combined with Mr. Giustra’s more recent and public pledge to give the William J. Clinton Foundation an additional $100 million, secured Mr. Giustra a place in Mr. Clinton’s inner circle, an exclusive club of wealthy entrepreneurs in which friendship with the former president has its privileges.
LINK:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/31/us/politics/31donor.h... TAKE A LOOK AT HER DONORS:
THE NEW REPUBLIC
With Friends Like These ...
by Marin Cogan, Melanie Mason, and Barron YoungSmith
Everything you ever wanted to know about the Clintons' shadiest donors.
Post Date Monday, February 04, 2008
It's not that we expect politicians to have squeaky-clean donor lists. You try running for office without, at one point or another, taking money from someone you probably shouldn't. Even Barack Obama, Mr. Clean, has Tony Rezko. But the Frank Giustra-Kazakhstan-Uranium affair, blown open by The New York Times last week, serves as a reminder that the relationship between the Clintons and money has not always been lily-white. Here, a guide to the unsavory characters who have been associated with Bill and Hillary Clinton.
http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=076fd56f-4aca... It's not exactly an advertisement for the working-class hero, or a picture her campaign freely displays. Her lengthy support for the Iraq War is Clinton's biggest liability in Democratic primary circles. But her ties to corporate America say as much, if not more, about what she values and cast doubt on her ability and willingness to fight for the progressive policies she claims to champion. She is "running to help and restore the great middle class in our country," Wolfson says. So was Bill in 1992. He was for "putting people first." Then he entered the White House and pushed for NAFTA, signed welfare reform, consolidated the airwaves through the Telecommunications Act of 1996 (leading to Clear Channel's takeover) and cleared the mergers of mega-banks. Would the First Lady do any different? Ever since the defeat of healthcare reform, Hillary has been a committed incrementalist, describing herself as a creature of the "moderate, sensible center" whom business admires and rewards. During her six years in the Senate, she's rarely been out front on difficult economic issues. Given her proximity to money and power, it's not hard to figure out why she keeps controversial figures close to her--even if their work becomes a liability for her campaign.
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http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070604/berman Lobbyists -Hillary # 1
http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/select.asp?cycle=2008 Oil & Gas _Hillary # 4 (although TOP DEM)
http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/select.asp?Ind=E01 Pharm/Health Products-Hillary # 3 (TOP DEM)
http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/select.asp?Ind=H04