A manager in a nearby town had been harassing and seducing female employees for years but never faced reprimand. It seemed he brandished a Teflon defense. In his late 50s and married, the man had behaved the same in three prior facilities. On all counts management did nothing but give the guy a better position with higher-pay. Somehow he impressed his superiors so, any charge was dismissed outright without any form of discipline or verbal chastise. He was likened to the pedophile priest transferred to a better parish plus promotion after getting caught with little altar boys.
And the harassment was blatant. While at work, Dick (alias) whispered in the ears of attractive young women, “Go with me tonight to the club and hotel and I’ll make sure to make it worthwhile at work.”
If the female resisted his advances, he would retaliate – either issuing severe discipline on trumped-up charges or denying a promotion. Unmistakably, Dick was a sexual predator – with impunity.
One young lady – married with two kids – decided to take matters into her own hands. Upper management in the district office 200 miles away had ignored written statements from 12 other women (not including the dozens of others unreported).
So Lydia (alias) decided to record the bastard at work as he spoke softly in her ear. Lydia concealed a voice recording MP3 device and documented Dick saying, “Hey babe, let’s you and me go out for a drink after work, then relax in a hot tub at the hotel where we can work up some real fun. You’ll get that promotion if you say yes.”
With recording in hand, Lydia turned her evidence over to district officials.
A few days later, she received a certified letter informing her she was being formally removed from the firm due to her violating company policy and state regulation prohibiting recording devices in the workplace.
So Lydia got fired for blowing the whistle on the jerk that was harassing and threatening her. Next week, Dick got promoted again – this time to management over the entire facility.
Lydia finally got her job back, but only after her grievance went through the 8-month process, finally landing before an arbitrator. But she only received backpay – no compensation for stress and late house and car payments due to no income during the interim. And no punitive charges against the system that wrongfully discharged her. Of course, she felt violated. Who wouldn’t? It was an absolute miscarriage of justice.
This true story is told to illustrate the desecration of justice infecting all facets of the current American system.
The late-2010 movie, FAIR GAME, about Ambassador Joseph Wilson blowing the whistle on George Bush – which motivated Karl Rove, George Bush, Dick Cheney and Scooter Libby to out Wilson’s CIA wife, Valerie Plame – reveals how Bush’s people (including the Justice Department) covered up for an Administration that lied America into war costing trillions and then carrying out a vendetta against the guy that exposed the lies by going after his wife. But more than his wife, the Bush administration seriously damaged the United States, because she was no low-ranking clerk in an obscure Langley office – a story Rove and Cheney tried to spin post-crime. She was a covert op specializing in nuclear-chemical-biological proliferation, specifically Iranian and Iraqi WMD, and was head of a CIA front company based in Georgetown with global connections. In this capacity Valarie Plame was dispatched to dozens of countries by the CIA.
The movie is par excellent. Sean Penn plays Ambassador Wilson and Naomi Watts plays Valerie Plame. The title of the movie is taken from Karl Rove’s statement to MSNBC’s Chris Matthews: “Wilson’s wife is fair game.”
Instead of being locked up for life, the quartet of evil are honored and protected by their successor, Barack Obama. That outrage, above all else, angers the Democratic base. Wilson and Plame were made to suffer, lose their jobs and businesses, and experience hundreds of death threats just because they were patriotic enough to tell the truth to the American people.
What the movie fails to elaborate is the source of the mushroom-cloud lie that Bush-Cheney-Rice-Rove blasted around the world – the reason Ambassador Wilson was dispatched to Niger in 2002 in the first place.
It began after the stolen Election 2000. A majority of President-Elect’s cabinet (including the VP) were charter members of a conservative think-tank established in 1997 called “Project for a New American Century” (PNAC). PNAC had posted several policy papers pre-2001 openly stating Saddam Hussein must be taken out and Iraq invaded. Bush’s administration-in-waiting did not wait for the Clinton people to vacate; it was busy preparing for the new team concentrating on Bush’s targeted agenda, which included tax-cuts for the very wealthy and the invasion of Iraq.
Bush’s Treasury Secretary, Paul O’Neill, stated on 60 MINUTES that Bush was focused on invading Iraq soon after inauguration, January 20, 2001. Other insiders report Bush was talking invasion as early as 1999.
Richard Clarke served as Bush’s counter-terrorism adviser on the U.S. Security Council. In an interview with Leslie Stahl, he revealed Bush was intent on attacking Iraq immediately after 9/11. Other of his writings indicate Bush was determined to go after Iraq from the beginning of the term – 9 months prior.
So, Ambassador Wilson’s New York Times article of July 6, 2003, WHAT I FOUND IN AFRICA, was not first in exposing the colossal treason committed by the Bush people. The plot is thicker than the simple lie of Saddam’s purchase of uranium from Niger.
There remains the foundation question, “Who forged the letter on official Niger letterhead and who stole the stationery and government seal at the onset? And when was the burglary?” The timing is amazingly relevant to the plot.
It started with a break-in on the morning of Jan. 2, 2001, eighteen days before Bush’s inaugural. Much like the 1972 Watergate Burglary, the thieves were dispatched by anonymous politicians for unknown reasons. Mysteriously, they confiscated official stationery and government stamps while ignoring highly-visible valuables and jewelry. Italian officials discovered that the Niger Embassy in Rome had been pillaged but were puzzled why nothing of value was missing.
A few months later, Italian intelligence obtained a stack of official-looking documents from an African diplomat. Signed by officials of the Niger government [who had actually retired in 1989], the papers revealed what purported to be an agreement between Iraqi Agents of strongman Saddam Hussein and Niger officials. The forged letter revealed Iraq was supposedly negotiating the sale of 500 tons of yellowcake from Niger, the type uranium used to build nuclear bombs. The Italians quickly notified the CIA which investigated and immediately determined the letter to be forged.
Circumstantial evidence strongly suggests – the embassy burglars, like the Watergate plumbers, were connected to and employed by the U.S. President (“elect”) and his people before being sworn in office to build a case for war against Iraq. Information further suggests the burglars were operatives of the neocons and members of the PNAC. Like money-laundering, they were probably hired through several layers to conceal the source. Conspiracy? Yes. The evidence, of course, is circumstantial yet so formidable; there is no doubt about ties to the Iraq invasion and “fixing the intelligence around the policy” (as Bush put it in July 2002 when meeting with British intelligence – recording in the famous Downing Street Minutes).
However, Ambassador Joseph Wilson’s trip to Niger over a year later was, indeed, just a corroboration of the CIA’S initial analysis of forgery – the fake letter that Bush had already endorsed and been using as an excuse to invade. But since America’s own CIA had discredited the letter, Bush deferred to British intelligence in his 2003 State of the Union with his 16-word lie: “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
The lie was deliberate. It was treasonous. For it led America down the path to war and financial ruin.
Again, the timing of these events suggests more than coincidence, but criminal intent. Every person that attempted to blow the whistle on Bush and his people became “fair game” for vengeance, in Rove’s words.
WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange opened a whole other can of worms. If he survives, it’ll be a miracle.
Unfortunately, the culprits remain protected, crimes go unpunished, while the whistle-blowers suffer. This is American justice. Just like the young lady that turned her boss in for sexual harassment, America has been pillaged and raped – yet the rapist relaxes in impunity because of his economic and political rank.
Had there not been a stolen Election 2000, there wouldn’t have been an embassy burglary, a forged letter, a deliberate lie of WMD, a 9/11, invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, and an economy bordering on Depression. Only the innocent go punished.