 Why Bush Administration
Watergated Eliot Spitzer
F. William Engdahl
www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net/
Mar 18, 2008
The spectacular and highly
bizarre release of secret FBI wiretap data to the New York Times
exposing the tryst of New York state Governor, Eliot Spitzer,
the now-infamous "No.9," with a luxury call-girl, had
less to do with the Bush Administration's pursuit of high moral
standards for public servants. Spitzer was likely the target
of a White House and Wall Street dirty tricks operation to silence
one of its most dangerous and vocal critics of their handling
[of] the current financial market crisis.
A useful rule of thumb in evaluating
spectacular scandals around prominent public figures is to ask
what and who might want to eliminate that person. In the case
of Governor Eliot Spitzer, a Democrat, it is clear that the spectacular
"leak" of government FBI wiretap records showing that
Spitzer paid a high-cost prostitute $4,300 for what amounted
to about an hour's personal entertainment, was politically motivated.
The press has almost solely focused on the salacious aspects
of the affair, not least the hefty fee Spitzer apparently paid.
Why the scandal breaks now is the more interesting question.
Spitzer became Governor of
New York following a high-profile record as a relentless State
Attorney General going after financial crimes such as the Enron
fraud and corruption by Wall Street investment banks during the
2002 dot.com bubble era. The powerful former head of the large
AIG insurance group, Hank Greenburg, was among his detractors.
He made powerful enemies by all accounts. He was bitterly hated
on Wall Street. He had made his political career on being ruthless
against financial corruption. Most recently, from his position
as Governor of the nation's second largest state, and home to
its financial industry, Spitzer had begun making high profile
attacks on the complicity of the Bush Administration in covertly
arranging bailout if its Wall Street financial friends at the
expense of ordinary homeowners and citizens, paid all with taxpayer
funds.
Curiously, Spitzer, who had
been elected governor in 2006 defeating a Republican by winning
nearly 70 percent of the vote, has been not charged in any crime.
However, the day the scandal broke New York Assembly Republicans
immediately announced plans to impeach Spitzer or put him on
public trial were he to refuse resignation. Spitzer could be
asked to testify in any trial involving the Emperors Club prostitution
ring. But so far he hasn't been charged with a crime. Prostitution
is illegal in most US states, but clients of prostitutes are
almost never charged, nor are their names usually leaked in a
case in process. The Spitzer case is in the hands of Washington
and not state authorities, underscoring the clear political nature
of the Spitzer "Watergate."
The New York Times said
Spitzer was an individual identified as Client 9 in court papers
filed last week. Client 9 arranged to meet with "Kristen,"
a prostitute who officially charged $1,000 an hour, on February
13 in a Washington hotel. Whatever transpired, Spitzer paid her
$4,300, according to the official documents. The case is clearly
political when compared with more egregious recent cases involving
Republicans. Republican Mark Foley was exposed propositioning
male interns in Congress and Rudolph Giuliani was discovered
cheating on his wife, but no or few Republican calls for resignations
were heard.
Why the attack now?
Spitzer had become increasingly
public in his blaming the Bush Administration for the nation's
current financial and economic disaster. He testified in Washington
in mid-February before the US House of Representatives Financial
Services subcommittee on the problems in New York-based specialized
insurance companies, known as "monoline" insurers.
In a national CNBC TV interview the same day, he laid blame for
the crisis and its broader economic fallout on the Bush Administration.
Spitzer recalled that several
years ago the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency went
to court and blocked New York State efforts to investigate the
mortgage activities of national banks. Spitzer argued the OCC
did not put a stop to questionable loan marketing practices or
uphold higher underwriting standards.
"This could have been
avoided if the OCC had done its job," Spitzer said in the
interview. "The OCC did nothing. The Bush Administration
let the housing bubble inflate and now that it's deflating we're
dealing with the consequences. The real failure, the genesis,
the germ that has spread was the subprime scandal," Spitzer
said. Fraudulent marketing and very low "teaser" mortgage
rates that later ballooned higher, were practices that should
have been stopped, he argued. "When mortgages are being
marketed, there is a marketplace obligation to ensure the borrower
can afford to pay back the debt," he said.
That TV interview was only
one instance of Spitzer laying blame on the Bush Republicans.
On February 14, Spitzer published a signed article in the influential
Washington Post titled, "Predatory Lenders' Partner in
Crime: How the Bush Administration Stopped the States From Stepping
In to Help Consumers."
That article, laying clear
blame on the Administration for the development of the sub-prime
crisis, appeared the day after his ill-fated tryst with the prostitute
at the Mayflower Hotel. Just a coincidence? Spitzer wrote, ""In
2003, during the height of the predatory lending crisis, the
OCC invoked a clause from the 1863 National Bank Act pre-empting
all state predatory lending laws, thereby rendering them inoperative.
The OCC also promulgated new rules that prevented states
from enforcing any of their own consumer protection laws
against national banks.
In his article Spitzer charged,
"Not only did the Bush administration do nothing to protect
consumers, it embarked on an aggressive and unprecedented campaign
to prevent states from protecting their residents from the very
problems to which he federal government was turning a blind eye."
Bush, said Spitzer right in the headline, was the "Predator
Lenders' Partner in Crime." The President, said Spitzer,
was a fugitive from justice. And Spitzer was in Washington to
launch a campaign to take on the Bush regime and the biggest
financial powers on the planet. Spitzer wrote, "When history
tells the story of the sub-prime lending crisis and recounts
its devastating effects on the lives of so many innocent homeowners
the Bush administration will not be judged favourably."
With that article, some Washington
insiders believe, Spitzer signed his own political death warrant.
###
Mar 18, 2008
 F. William Engdahl
 F. William Engdahl
is the author of Seeds
of Destruction:
The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation. Publication Launch:
23 November 2007.
He also authored
'A
Century of War:
Anglo-American Oil Politics,'
Pluto Press Ltd.
He may be contacted
at his website, www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net.
321gold Ltd
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