Alex Constantine - December 15, 2006
Tommy Thompson, H&HS secretary when McElravy hired on, drags you straight back to the Pinay Circle of CIA-Republican financiers – Deason, the Hunts, Farish, Johnson, the Wylys – who have haunted this investigation from the start ...
Former Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson is a member of the COUNCIL FOR NATIONAL POLICY (CNP, see part 17), the ultra-conservative Christian cadré that received lavish funding from CAROLINE HUNT and launched JACK ABRAMOFF on his shooting-star crime spree, the strategic base of Trant Lott, Gary Bauer, James Dobson, Jerry Falwell, Ralph Reed, Pat Robertson and many more.228 The Department of Health & Human Services, where Steve McElravy was employed, was overseen by a clutch of arch-conservative cronies:
• Tommy Thompson (DH&H Secretary) – Former Wisconsin Gov. Thompson hails from the AKIN GUMP STRAUSS, HAUER & FELD LAW firm in Washington, D.C. Akin, Gump clients have included Khalid bin Mahfouz, Mohammed Hussein Al-Amoudi and Salah Idris. (Charles Lewis, executive director of the Center for Public Integrity, the non-partisan political watchdogs, maintains that Akin, Gump's representation of Saudi power-brokers with "ties to terrorists" poses unique ethical considerations "since partners at the firm are so close to the president," according to the Boston Herald.229) Thompson was also a senior advisor at the Deloitte consulting firm, chairman of the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions.
• Claude Allen (Deputy Secretary) – From Virginia, Allen is a prominent Black Republican. He was also press secretary for the arch-conservative Sen. Jesse Helms (R-NC).
• Wade Horn (Assistant Secretary for Children and Families) – Adjunct fellow at the Hudson Institute and a columnist for the Washington Times. President of the National Fatherhood Initiative, Horn served as Commissioner of Children, Youth and Families, and Chief of the Children's Bureau at Thompson's H&HS. An adjunct faculty member of Georgetown University's Public Policy Institute, he is a member of the U.S. Advisory Board on Welfare Indicators.
• Susan Orr (Associate Commissioner, Children’s Bureau) – Orr was the director of social studies policy at the Reason Institute, a "libertarian think tank" (CIA front) that advocates privatization of government services.
• Andrew Bush (Director of the Office of Family Assistance) – Andrew Bush was Director of the Welfare Policy Center at the Hudson Institute.
• Alex Azar II (General Counsel) – Alex Azar II clerked for Justice Antonin Scalia, one of Bush's self-professed models for future Supreme Court Justices. Azar was recruited by Kenneth Starr for the Whitewater investigation.230
Akin, Gump, Thompson's law firm, also gave us Thomas S. Foley, a partner since 2001, former Speaker of the House of Representatives and member of Rumsfeld's Defense Policy Board. Prior to rejoining the firm in 2001, Foley served as the 25th U.S. ambassador to Japan. He was appointed to the Select Committee to Investigate Covert Arms Transactions with Iran. Foley sits on the board of advisors of the CNP and Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).231
Also Robert S. Strauss (see Part 1 & 17 suppl.), chairman of the board and founder of Akin, Gump. Strauss is a former special agent of the FBI. He received his law degree from the University of Texas. In January 1946, Strauss entered private law practice and founded the firm that would become Akin, Gump, with offices in Texas, Washington, Brussels, and Moscow. He was Democratic National Committee chairman from 1973-76, and chaired Jimmy Carter's election campaign in 1976.232
On December 3, 2004, Thompson resigned as H&HS czar, to be succeeded by Michael Leavitt. Bush praised Thompson as a "stalwart member of my homeland security team." The following month, as London's Guardian reported, "the Bush administration was confronted with fresh evidence of a far-reaching clandestine campaign to influence public opinion yesterday after a third conservative commentator admitted receiving payments for championing its policies. Michael McManus, a newspaper columnist, was paid up to $10,000 to praise the administration's marriage initiative." Fees were approved by a branch of H&HS "and were funnelled through the Lewin Group," a health care consultancy firm in Des Moines, Iowa. "The commentator's rightwing Marriage Savers Foundation received an additional $49,000 in government grants. Mr McManus did not disclose the payments in his columns."233 It was one of several Bush administration "payola" scandals to hit the front pages.
Shortly after dropping out of the Bush administration, Thompson joined the board of directors of Applied Digital Solutions (ADS), developer of the VeriChip, the injectable, glass-encapsulated radio frequency identification (RFID) implant. In public appearances, he suggested implanting the chips to link electronic medical records.234 Incidentally, Thompson picked up a considerable share in the company. (Thompson's CBS interview re the RFID device is here: http://www.spychips.com/devices/tommythompsonverichip.html)
As secretary of Health and Human Services, Thompson oversaw the FDA's approval of the VeriChip as a medical device. After leaving his cabinet post, Thompson joined the ADS board of directors.235
In July 2005, the media reported that he would soon receive a VeriChip injection. But by December, the Spychips web site reports, "Ex-Bush cabinet member Tommy Thompson still hasn't received an RFID implant despite a televised promise he made in July 2005 to do so [and] he has no plans to undergo the procedure anytime soon, according to recent revelations." According to ADS, "only about 60 living persons in the U.S. have agreed to be chipped. In addition to the voluntary recipients, the company's implants were injected into the deceased victims of hurricane Katrina, and there are plans to chip mentally disabled patients at a residential center in Chattanooga. VeriChip has also had talks with the Pentagon about chipping military personnel, though Procter said that 'no formal agreements have been reached.'"235
Thompson has long held one eye on the White House. In 1996, Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole included Thompson in his short list of potential WP nominees. Other names on the list: New Jersey Governor Christine Whitman, George W. Bush, Michigan Governor John Engler and former U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Jack Kemp. Dole picked Kemp, but Thompson and Engler played key roles in Dole's run for president.237
And then there is the Manhattan Institute (MI)/Bell Curve eugenics connection, as explained by Franc's Puteaux Cedex: "The Manhattan Institute was founded in 1978 by William Casey, who later became the CIA director during the Reagan administration. As a top intelligence operative, Casey helped the CIA bring thousands of Nazi SS officials into the US after WWII, as part of Operation Paper Clip. Nazi doctors, scientists, and intelligence experts were installed in private industry, in the CIA, in medical and psychological research programs in universities, and in the media. The scientists included specialists in eugenics, propaganda, and using pharmaceuticals for social control and research on genetics, and many of them had extensive experience in rounding up people to be exterminated, as former Nazis became a core group within the newly formed CIA. Under Casey's leadership covert action increased in Afghanistan, Central America, and Angola.
"Among other endeavors, he funded BIN LADEN and Co. with billions in arms, cash, and terrorist training and was a pivotal figure in the Iran-Contra Affair, in which US weapons were sold to Iran and the money was funneled to Nicaraguan rebels. William Casey suffered seizures, underwent brain surgery, and died from nervous-system lymphoma just before he was to testify in Congress (1986). Compassionate conservatism became public policy in New York City under the reign of Rudy Giuliani, who claimed to get his ideas directly from MI. Many of his policies were based on the books of Charles Murray, who was a top MI resident scholar when he co-authored 'THE BELL CURVE,' which is clearly SUPREMACIST EUGENIC PROPAGANDA of the 'over class.'
"MURRAY WAS A PAID CONSULTANT ON THEN-GOVERNOR TOMMY THOMPSON'S WELFARE PROGRAM.
"Other high level neo-conservatives that associate with Murray's ideas include Bush Senior and Junior, KARL ROVE, DOE Secretary Spencer Abraham, Elaine Chou, and Linda Chavez. Tommy Thompson's corporate connections include Philip Morris, Amtrak, America Online, Time Warner, General Electric, Merck, and Abbott Laboratories. Also linked to MI, Jason Turner was Thompson's #2 man on welfare reform in Wisconsin and then later hired by Giuliani to head up NYC's welfare reform. Turner was forced to apologize for using a Nazi death camp slogan, 'Work shall make you free' (Arbiet Macht Frie), to explain Giuliani's workfare policy. Nazi methods of extermination included starving and working slave labor to the point of death, under a program called "Vernichtung durch Arbeit" (annihilation through work)."238
This is the abiding deep, dark secret behind the HORSE BREEDING in Blue Grass country among the Hunt Syndicate "Over-Class," Farish and like-minded white supremicists. Nelson Bunker Hunt and his brother Herbert (also Jesse Helms), for example, were active in the International Association for the Advancement of Ethnology and Eugenics (IAAEE) – the early publisher of the racist-revisionist "academic" journal Mankind Quarterly.239
The Journal of Social Issues (1998) reports that the IAAEE's key "benefactor was Colonel Wickliffe Draper, a segregationist who opposed the civil rights movement of the 1960s and sought to fund research that would provide scientific justification for segregation and revive the concept of racial hygiene which had been discredited as a result of the Nazis. In the 1970s, Gregor was criticised for accepting grants from the Pioneer Fund, which had been established by Draper to advance his views. IAAEE received $82,000 in grants from the Pioneer Fund between 1971 and 1996. ... In the controversial book The Bell Curve, authors Charles Murray and Richard J. Hernstein recommend two books on race and intelligence by three Pioneer Fund recipients."240
GW Bush gave the eugenics crowd entry into his administration through his "Faith-Based Initiative" – an Orwellian term, like "New Freedom," that resulted in the hiring of Ananda Margan Steve McElravy at SAMHSA, under H&HS Secretart Tommy Thompson. Two men were placed in charge of the "Faith-Based" scheme, reports homeless activist Robert Lederman, "John J. DiIulio Jr. and Stephen Goldsmith. Both men are senior fellows of the CIA's Manhattan Institute and are colleagues of Charles Murray, author of the classic text of scientific racism, The Bell Curve."
In fact, "most of Bush's advisors are also associated with the Bell Curve. As just one of many examples, Murray was a consultant on Tommy Thompsons' Wisconsin Welfare Reform program, which Bush will make the national model." The New York Times has confirmed "the CIA origin of the Manhattan Institute, its influence on GW Bush and its very close decade-long association with Charles Murray, who wrote The Bell Curve while a research fellow at The Manhattan Institute.Whether you are a fundamentalist Christian, an Orthodox Jew, a devout Muslim or an atheist you might question what part the CIA rightfully has in a multi-billion dollar 'religion initiative' or in any domestic US policy decisions. The best known modern example of government sponsored religion-based initiatives is Nazi Germany."
For numerous articles on the connection between GW Bush, the CIA and Nazis see: http://Baltech.org/lederman/spray/
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New Bush Office Seeks Closer Ties to Church Groups
NY Times
January 29, 2001
WASHINGTON, Jan. 28. President Bush has selected a University of Pennsylvania professor of political science to head the first federal office intended to promote the integration of religious groups into federally financed social services, several Bush advisers said today.
The advisers said the opening of the office and the appointment of John J. DiIulio Jr. to fill it would almost certainly be announced at a White House event on Monday, and they acknowledged that it would draw heated opposition from organizations and religious groups that advocate a strict separation of church and state.
But the encouragement and government financing of faith-based programs was a signature campaign issue for Mr. Bush, who has said he reads the Bible every day. And the decision to entrust the new federal office in charge of that effort to Mr. DiIulio, a widely published expert on juvenile crime with impressive academic credentials, is an example of the political caution with which the Bush administration will proceed.
The choice of Mr. DiIulio, in fact, is only one of several ways in which Mr. Bush and his aides are trying to blunt any impression that what the president is doing amounts to an evangelical endeavor.
"John is a social scientist who believes in empirical evidence," said one Bush adviser, stressing Mr. DiIulio's focus on provable results from faith-based social programs that address problems like substance abuse, youth violence and teenage pregnancy. The adviser also emphasized that Mr. DiIulio does not see faith-based programs "as a panacea," but rather as one arrow in a quiver with plenty of others.
In addition to Mr. DiIulio, the other central figure in the effort is Stephen Goldsmith, the former mayor of Indianapolis who was the chief domestic policy adviser for Mr. Bush's presidential campaign. Several Bush advisers said Mr. Goldsmith would be the chairman of a new national advisory board whose work will complement that of the new federal office. Mr. Goldsmith will also serve as an official adviser to Mr. Bush on the issue.
Mr. Bush and his aides do not want the proposals related to faith-based programs that they unveil to seem too driven by religion. Indeed, the president's goal is to find new ways for the federal government to encourage private charities including but not limited to religious groups to provide more social services. To that end, the title of the new federal office will allude not just to faith-based programs but also to community initiatives, although several advisers said the order in which the words "faith" and "community" would be placed was under debate.
Additionally, Mr. Bush has invited not only leaders of faith-based groups but also the heads of other not-for-profit organizations to meet on Monday morning at the White House to kick off a week of events intended to describe and promote the president's vision. The guest list, according to one of the people on it, includes the Rev. Stephen E. Burger, executive director of the Association of Gospel Rescue Missions; Sara E. Meléndez, president and chief executive officer of Independent Sector, a coalition of nonprofit organizations and foundations; and Millard Fuller, founder and president of HABITAT FOR HUMANITY International, the ecumenical house-building group.
"It is about faith-based institutions, but it's also about more than that," said another Bush adviser, referring to Mr. Bush's plan to encourage private groups to administer more of the kinds of local programs often provided by government. A more thorough integration of faith-based and other not-for-profit groups into federally financed social services is a cornerstone of compassionate conservatism, a political philosophy with which Mr. Bush has strongly identified himself. Compassionate conservatism holds that while the government should limit the scope of the social services it provides, it should take an active role as a catalyst and source of financing for work done by neighborhood and religious groups.
Mr. Bush has said some of the groups with the best results for rehabilitating prisoners or fighting drug abuse are ones that take religious and spiritual approaches. He has also said the government should not hesitate to give money to these groups, as long as secular groups that provide similar services are also available. There are signs that these initiatives may elicit bipartisan support. This morning, on the ABC News program "This Week," Representative Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri, the House minority leader, signaled interest in Mr. Bush's approach.
The Bush administration will roll out these initiatives with the utmost care, under the guidance of Mr. DiIulio, who is Catholic, and Mr. Goldsmith, who is Jewish. Although both are well liked by religious conservatives, neither is an ideological lightning rod like Marvin Olasky, another proponent of faith- based programs and compassionate conservatism. Mr. Olasky was with Mr. Goldsmith and Mr. DiIulio at a long meeting with Mr. Bush in Austin, Tex., nearly two years ago. "It's not just that we're paying attention to the politics of it," one of the Bush advisers said. "We're paying attention to the pragmatics of it. I think we're doing it right, and I think we're going to be careful about it." Mr. DiIulio's résumé makes him seem like a personification of Mr. Bush's attempts to retain the support of religious conservatives while also courting moderates and building a broad base of support.
He is a fellow at both the Manhattan Institute, which is a conservative think tank, and the Brookings Institute, which is not. In a two-month period in the summer of 1999, he wrote major articles for The Weekly Standard, a conservative publication, and for The New Democrat, a moderate one. He identifies himself as a new Democrat. Mr. DiIulio has also done extensive work with black pastors in urban areas, and one of the Bush administration's hopes is that its advocacy of faith-based programs will be a bridge to black ministers and win some support with the Congressional Black Caucus. Mr. Bush garnered the support of about 9 percent of black voters in the presidential election and has been reaching out aggressively to African- Americans ever since.
This morning, he, his wife, Laura, and his parents attended a Methodist church here with a predominantly black congregation. For years, Mr. DiIulio, who taught at Princeton before the University of Pennsylvania, was known more for his work on criminal justice issues than on his interest in faith-based programs. He was among the voices loudly advocating increased prison construction in the early 1990's and wrote a 1996 book about the war against crime, "Body Count," with John P. Walters and William J. Bennett, the former education secretary and drug czar. Mr. Goldsmith, a former prosecutor, was a two-term mayor in Indianapolis who privatized everything from golf course construction to sewage treatment and showed an interest in revitalizing long-neglected inner-city neighborhoods. Late in his second term, he started the Front Porch Alliance, a group that acted as a liaison between religious congregations, mostly urban African-American churches and government. For his work with churches, Mr. Goldsmith, a Republican, was lauded by many evangelical Christian leaders.
But some Jewish leaders said they were nervous about an approach that redirects tax dollars to churches. "There's a lot of respect for Stephen Goldsmith," said Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism. "Many in the Jewish community know him and respect him, but any time you have a formal government endorsement of religion that this faith-based office conveys, that takes us down a path that too often in our history has turned out to be disastrous for religious freedom and religious tolerance."
NY Times Monday, May 12, 1997
Manhattan Institute Has Nudged New York Rightward "...the institute was founded as a free-market education and research organization by William Casey, who then went off to head the Central Intelligence Agency in the Reagan Administration."
NY Times June 12, 2000
Bush Culls Campaign Theme From Conservative Thinkers
Gov. George W. Bush has said his political views have been shaped by the work of Myron Magnet of the Manhattan Institute. From the MI website: Books That Influenced Gov. George W. Bush Myron Magnet's The Dream and the Nightmare: "Referring to this book, Gov. Bush has said, other than the Bible, that it was the most important book he had read..."
"Education and Welfare: Meeting the Challenge A Message from CCI Chairman, Mayor Stephen Goldsmith [CCI is a division of Manhattan Institute] America is in the midst of an urban renaissance... April conference Next Steps in Welfare Reform highlighted just how far we have come. The conference brought together public officials like Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson and scholars like Dr. Charles Murray to discuss how governments and private groups have reduced dependency and increased self-sufficiency...Fifteen years after the Manhattan Institute published Charles Murray's landmark study of American welfare policy, Losing Ground, the presentations showed that ideas once seen as radical now form the mainstream of the welfare debate."
[Among the panelists alongside Murray and Goldsmith was Jason Turner, former head of Wisconsin's welfare program. Turner later became infamous as head of NYC's abusive workfare system after quoting the motto over the gates of Auschwitz - "Arbeit Macht Frei - work shall make you free"
[see: NManhattan Institute http://www.manhattan-institute.org/ ]
[To be continued ... ]
NEXT ...
SAMHSA & THE EMERGING BRAVE NEW WORLD
NOTES
228.) People for the American Way, "Right-Wing Affiliations of Bush Administration Officials":
http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oid=6190
229.) Maggie Mulvihill, Jonathan Wells and Jack Meyers, "White House Connection –
Saudi 'Agents' Close Bush Friends," December 12, 2001.
http://www.rense.com/general17/whitehouseconnection.htm
230.) Ibid.
231.) Akin, Gump web site:
http://www.akingump.com/img/attorney_pics/1798.jpg
232.) U.S.-Russia Business Council web site, "Robert S. Strauss – Chairman Emeritus of the Board U.S.-Russia Business Council."
http://www.usrbc.org/council/strauss%20bio.htm
233.) Suzanne Goldenberg, "Bush payola scandal deepens as third columnist admits being paid," The Guardian, January 29, 2005.
The Lewin Group home page: http://www.lewingroup.com/
234.) Wikipedia entry, "Tommy Thompson":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_Thompson
235.) e-week site, "Tommy Thompson: A Pro-Chipper in the White House?"
http://blog.eweek.com/blogs/eweek/archive/2006/11/16/14697.aspx
236.) Spychips.com, "RFID IMPLANTS: FINE FOR THEE, BUT NOT FOR ME, Ex-HHS Head Puts Off Being Chipped Despite July Promise," December 7, 2005.
http://www.spychips.com/press-releases/verichip-thompson-no-implant.html
237.) Answers.com:
http://www.answers.com/topic/tommy-thompson
238.) The Truce of God site, "The Eugenic Connection":
www.trdd.org/EUGBRE.HTM
239.) Wikipedia entry, "Nelson Bunker Hunt":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelson_Bunker_Hunt
240.) A. Winston "Science in the service of the far right: Henry E. Garrett, the IAAEE, and the Liberty Lobby," International Association for the Advancement of Ethnology, Experts in the Service of Social Reform: SPSSI, Psychology, and Society, 1936-1996. Journal of Social Issues, Spring, 1998.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Association_for_the_Advancement_of_Ethnology_and_Eugenics
Off Topic:
Have you looked into the death of Mark R V Southern, prof. at Middlebury?