The Criminal Leftist Elite Paradise
Part 3 of 5 in a series exposing the connections between the politicians, their strange and Anti-American actions and vast amounts of illicit money from criminal sources
The Dominican Republic provides a major path and organization for distribution of Colombian cocaine coming into the US. Yet the Dominican Republic was given a pass while other countries have been cleaned up. What connections does the DR have?
Quite a bit it seems: Bill and Hillary Clinton have so many connections to the Dominican Republic that it is hard to know where to start. From terrorist recipients of pardons, to real estate, to meetings with fellow Leftists - the Dominican Republic has been their home away from home.
Above: Bill Clinton and Hillary share a laugh. Chavez and Fernandez make plans.
Written by Dagny D'Anconia
Friday 10 August 2007
(In Part 1 it was shown how many ways politicians can be secretly bribed - especially when offshore operations are considered. In part 2 it was shown that FinCEN has not acted to shut down the Dominican Republic's money laundering operations - even though it is an egregious drug pathway and money launderer. We continue to connect the dots...)
The Dominican Republic provides a major path and organization for distribution of Colombian cocaine coming into the US. Yet the Dominican Republic was given a pass while other countries have been cleaned up. What connections does the DR have? Quite a bit it seems: Bill and Hillary Clinton have so many connections to the Dominican Republic that it is hard to know where to start. From terrorist recipients of pardons, to real estate, to meetings with fellow Leftists - the Dominican Republic has been their home away from home.
The current president of the Dominican Republic is Leonel Fernandez. He is a close friend of Bill Clinton and he boasts friendships with a number of wealthy leftist leaders. Fernandez restored the Dominican Republic's diplomatic ties with Cuba and invited Fidel Castro to make his first visit the Dominican Republic in 1997. Fernandez has also maintained close relations with Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. Fernandez attended Chavez's inauguration and his meetings of Petrocaribe, and maintains close ties to Raul Castro as well. Fernandez also established diplomatic relations with Vietnam last year. When a leader of Leftist drug terrorists in Colombia (the FARC) was kidnapped in Caracas Venezuela, it was Fernandez that "mediated" between Colombian president Uribe and Chavez. [37]
In the time between 2000 and 2004 when the centrist Hipolito Mejia was president, there were good relations between the US and the Dominican Republic with earnest attempts to control borders, shut down criminal activity and expose corruption. Mejia inherited the corrupt mess that Fernandez had presided over from 1997 to 2000. He made all appearances at a sincere attempt to deal with the corruption and drug trade. Mejia also provided troops to help in Iraq, and he started extraditing people requested by American law enforcement to the US. [38]
Mejia's pro-American, anti-Chavez statements caused Chavez to halt oil shipments to the Dominican Republic, contributing to the financial troubles that led to Mejia's election loss in 2004. Growth turned negative in 2003 with reduced tourism and limited growth in the US economy (the source of about 80% of the Dominican Republic's legitimate export revenues). A major bank fraud that had been going on since long before Mejia was also revealed. Fernandez has also been accused of orchestrating phony corruption charges to destroy Mejia and his administration. (If this sounds familiar, it is because a very similar game plan has been played out in the US against American conservatives in the Culture of Corruption.) [39]
After the 2004 election Fernandez returned to business as usual. He joined Chavez's Petrocaribe alliance, offered to host the next Petrocaribe summit, and attended the Anti-American (Non-Alligned Countries Summit) summit held in Cuba. [40] Since Fernandez's second administration started the number of money laundering investigations dropped, as did the amount of seized money from such operations. It was only in 2006 that the Dominican Republic finally got around to its first money laundering prosecution. [41]
Thus Fernandez's administration keeps up some appearances while accomplishing little to nothing about the drug trade. Even if there are some laws and institutions on the books to deal with the drug trade, they are thwarted by foot dragging and by simply not funding them:
"In 2006 the DR continued to struggle to implement anti-money laundering legislation passed in 2002 [under Mejia]; and its Financial Analysis Unit, which became operational in 2005, still lacks the resources and institutional support to perform effectively. ... Dominican institutions nevertheless remain vulnerable to influence by narcotics traffickers. Aggravating this situation is the fact that endemic corruption and favoritism among the DR's law enforcement elite lead to frequent changes in office among its command-level officers, retarding any progress made with prior officials." [42]
Bill Clinton has also used his position as President to make even more interesting Leftist friends. The FALN terrorists in Puerto Rico were Communist revolutionaries organized by Fidel Castro in an attempt to turn Puerto Rico into a Marxist paradise. The FALN committed terrorist acts in the US by organizing over 120 bomb attacks in the US and killing many Americans including police officers back in the 80's. Bill Clinton pardoned the 16 convicted terrorists, after being asked to do so by Jimmy Carter (another frequent visitor to the Dominican Republic). [43]
Remember that the drug and money pipeline runs from the Dominican Republic across the Canal De La Mona to Puerto Rico where it is received by criminal organizations there for transport. The FALN is just part of the Marxist backed drug chain, as the FARC Marxists are in Colombia. Thus Bill Clinton used his position to help these known terrorists in the Leftist drug supply chain. Socialists praised the pardons while Conservatives condemned them, although they were mostly overlooked among the flood of other suspicious Clinton pardons. [44]
The Clintons have high level connections to the Leftist elite in the Dominican Republic that go all the way back to the Vietnam War era. Harold Ickes ran Hillary's Senate campaign, was Hillary's "Health Care Czar", and was the Deputy Chief of Staff for Bill Clinton's White House. Ickes also worked closely with Soros to set up numerous organizations since the 2000 election. As Dick Morris said " Whenever there was something that [Bill Clinton] thought required ruthlessness or vengeance or sharp elbows and sharp knees or, frankly, skulduggery, he would give it to Harold." [45]
Back in 1965 Harold Ickes was involved in a socialist coup plot to overthrow the elected president of the Dominican Republic and replace him with a Leftie who had been in exile in Cuba. Juan Bosch had spent two years in Cuba and returned to the Dominican Republic to stage a socialist coup for the Presidency. The Boston Globe said that Ickes was there to "help deposed leftist president Juan Bosch return to office." Thanks to the arrival of 22,000 American Marines, the coup was thwarted. Ickes escaped and returned to the US where he entered the anti-Vietnam war movement. [46]
Thus the Clintons have a man with Leftist connections to the Dominican Republic going way back. Ickes is well known as the dirty tricks master in the Clinton arsenal from that coup attempt right up to the present day: "The episode suggests that Ickes' involvement with the far left went beyond the ordinary civil-rights activism and anti-Vietnam protests, which most of his journalistic profiles cite. Whether as a Mob lawyer or a covert participant in Latin American coups, Ickes has spent more than 40 years living and working in the company of killers." [47]
When the Clintons were in the White House, they even tried to get a dedicated Cuban Intelligence officer from the Dominican Republic to be the ambassador to the Dominican Republic. The nomination was blocked by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee due to her background - but that did not stop her being on the White House staff anyway. [48]
The Clintons also spend time in the Dominican Republic regularly - usually as guests of Oscar de la Renta the fashion designer. "The de la Renta home line is elegantly tropical," said a seasoned fashion reporter "I think it would give you a wonderful feeling of being in Cuba in the '50s." [49] When fines for corrupt bookkeeping of Hillary's 2000 Senate race were announced, the Clintons were conveniently out of the country in the Dominican Republic where no one could ask any embarrassing questions. It is their fashionable tropical sanctuary. [50]
In May of this year the Clintons were rumored in multiple sources to have purchased a piece of beach property in the Dominican Republic right next to Oscar de la Renta. [51] That was not supposed to be known and it was quickly denied by the Clinton's lackeys. [52]
After all, a woman running for President can't have it known she is also investing in another country. As one realtor blogger said "Wouldn't you think that if you are running for President of the United States you would buy property in the United States? I mean seriously, is this telling us that Madame Hillary could not find any property in her own country (or territories) that were good enough for her? If this is true it will have to be one of the biggest political blunders in a good long while."[53]
Once the purchase was clumsily revealed, it was probably a simple matter to deny it and rearrange ownership through intermediaries. However it still raises some questions: If they did buy, who sold them the property and was it for full price? Such a gift would be quite a large scale bribe, and would facilitate additional bribes by providing an overseas base for accounts and hidden assets - particularly since the Dominican Republic is shadow-land for money laundering and Colombian drug lords. With increasing international scrutiny of money laundering transactions, the need for a place for storage of physical assets such as gold, diamonds etc. becomes more necessary.
The Dominican Republic is a boom town for wealthy Lefties. Donald Trump, the infamous casino magnate and general jerk, is currently building a resort at Cap Cana on the fashionable east side of Dominican Republic near Puerto Rico and was able to sell US$300 million of lots in four hours. Trump has called Bush "the worst president ever" and has given exclusively to Democrats since 2000. Trump has also been kissing up to the Clintons, inviting them (and Rudy Guiliani) to his latest wedding. The Dominican Republic seems to be the place for liberal elites to meet and party away from the United States. In April of 2003, the Clintons met with there with the former leftist prime minister of Canada, Jean Chrétien. [54]
The Dominican Republic is also the place for meetings with rather unsavory characters. The Clintons met there many times and most recently in May of this year with a very wealthy Democrat operative and real estate and media mogul from Las Vegas named Brian Greenspun. [55] Greenspun was able to acquire one of those famous Bill Clinton pardons for an international weapons dealer and business partner of his before the Clintons left office. Greenspun's late father had also been an illegal weapons dealer. [56] Being the Editor for the Las Vegas Sun has given Greenspun a mover and shaker position in the power elite in Las Vegas. Mafia watchdogs have reported on his use of the Sun to assist corrupt activities. [57]
Bill Clinton has also put together business deals for the Dominican Republic. He has made a public show of supporting investment there. He also put together a consortium of energy companies to provide clean power for the Dominican Republic. [58]
Bill Clinton's affection for the Dominican Republic knows no bounds. He has also directed the Bill Clinton Foundation to give AIDS suppression drugs to the Dominican Republic. Perhaps that is not too surprising given the fact that the Dominican Republic is a well known sex tourism site - with children as well as adults available. UNICEF reports estimate at least 25,000 children involved in the Dominican sex trade, 63% of that figure being girls. Marketed as "The New Thailand" by German tour operators [59], it is a hub for not only drugs and money laundering, but also sex tourism.
"The Dominican Republic is a source, transit, and destination country for men, women, and children trafficked for the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation and forced labor. Dominican women and children are trafficked for sexual exploitation to Western Europe, Australia, Argentina, Brazil, Costa Rica, the Caribbean, Panama, and Suriname," the report says. It notes that a "significant" number of women and children also are trafficked within the country for sexual exploitation and forced labor. ... Venezuelans and Colombians are also trafficked to the country for sexual exploitation and forced labor, and even some Chinese nationals have been smuggled to the Dominican Republic, allegedly with the assistance of senior Dominican consular and immigration officials, and subjected to conditions of involuntary servitude while waiting to make their way to the United States." [60]
Thus the close relationship between the Clintons, corruption, smuggling, the Marxists and the Dominican Republic goes back many decades and is alive and well today in this criminal Leftist elite paradise. Perhaps it explains why the FinCEN did not act against the Dominican Republic. However, the Clintons are not the only ones doing such favors for the Dominican Republic as we shall see in the last article in this series: Part 4 - The Curious Assistance of the Bush White House.
References
37. http://www.dominicantoday.com/app/article.aspx?id=17600
http://www.dominicantoday.com/app/article.aspx?id=2456
http://www.dominicantoday.com/app/article.aspx?id=11566
http://www.dominicantoday.com/app/article.aspx?id=2907
http://www.dominicantoday.com/app/article.aspx?id=2985
http://www.dominicantoday.com/app/article.aspx?id=8918
38. http://commdocs.house.gov/committees/intlrel/hfa82262.000/hfa82262_0f.htm
39. http://www.dominicantoday.com/app/article.aspx?id=11115
http://www.dominicantoday.com/app/article.aspx?id=1544
40. http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2004/5/24/112619.shtml http://www.dominicantoday.com/app/article.aspx?id=1760
41. http://www.cfatf.org/profiles/media/MEVAL%20Report%20-%20Dominican%20Republic%
202006%20(En).pdf
http://www.dominicantoday.com/app/article.aspx?id=10818
42. http://www.dominicantoday.com/app/article.aspx?id=22894
43. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuerzas_Armadas_de_Liberación_Nacional_%28Puerto_Rico%29 http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=19760
44.
http://www.isreview.org/issues/03/Puerto_Rico.shtmlhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_
FARC_attacks_in_2005 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutionary_Armed_Forces_of_Colombia
45. http://www.laborers.com/Ickes_Vanity-9-97.html
46. http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=1624
47. http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=45227
48. http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=17693
49. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18662562/http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=3015492&page=1
50. http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2006/1/16/83023.shtml
51. http://www.nypost.com/seven/05152007/gossip/liz/clintons_new_escape_liz_liz_smith.htm http://www.royalpalmbeachsamana.com/why_to_invest.html http://www.topix.net/forum/world/
dominican-republic/TAD4KT57JT829Q1Q4
52. http://www.dominicantoday.com/app/article.aspx?id=24139
53.
http://www.therealestatebloggers.com/2007/05/16/hillary-and-bill-clinton-buying-property-overseas/
54. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/fr/898362/posts
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2007/03/16/trump-bush-is-probably-_n_43614.html
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/02-16-2007/
0004529634&EDATE=
http://www.fairvote.org/e_news/pres_campaign_events_2000.htm
http://www.gawker.com/news/donald-trump/?refId=29556
55. http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=3015492&page=1
56. http://www.1st100.com/part3/greenspun.html http://www.pletz.com/shachar/artigo17.htm
57. http://www.americanmafia.com/Inside_Vegas/3-6-06_Inside_Vegas.html
http://www.dominicantoday.com/app/article.aspx?id=10547
58. http://www.dominicantoday.com/app/article.aspx?id=22693
59. http://www.ecpat.net/eng/ecpat_inter/Publication/Other/English/Pdf_page/ecpat_sex_tourism_
dom_rebublic.pdf
60. http://www.state.gov/g/tip/rls/tiprpt/2007/index.htm