 by RUSS BAKER and ADAM FEDERMAN | October 18, 2007 Research support for this story was provided by the Investigative Fund of The Nation Institute. Published in conjunction with The Nation. IN THE CLINTONS' PURSUIT OF POWER, there is no such thing as a strange bedfellow. One recently exposed inamorata was Norman Hsu, the mysterious businessman from Hong Kong who brought in $850,000 to Hillary Clinton's campaign before being unmasked as a fugitive. Her campaign dismissed Hsu as someone who'd slipped through the cracks of an otherwise unimpeachable system for vetting donors, and perhaps he was. The same cannot be said for the notorious financier Alan Quasha, whose involvement with Clinton is at least as substantial--and still under wraps. Political junkies will recall Quasha as the controversial figure who bailed out George W. Bush's failing oil company in 1986, folding Bush into his company, Harken Energy, thus setting him on the path to a lucrative and high-profile position as an owner of the Texas Rangers baseball team, and the presidency. The persistently unprofitable Harken--many of whose board members, connected to powerful foreign interests and the intelligence community, nevertheless profited enormously--faced intense scrutiny in the early 1990s and again during Bush's first term. Now Quasha is back--on the other side of the aisle. [ More...] Previous RealNews Exclusive Stories 25 Democratic Consultants
Jack Quinn served as Vice President Gore’s Chief of Staff, and later as Counsel to President Clinton. Now he is a partner in a political consulting and lobbying firm with a close friend of Tom DeLay, and together, they have represented clients who want to drill in fragile areas of Alaska, put the screws to already beleaguered American consumers, and prevent the introduction of more healthy dairy substitutes in school lunches. That’s not to say that Jack Quinn is a bad guy. He’s just doing what lots of folks do in the course of making a very comfortable living in Washington. [ More... ]  Bush Senior Early CIA Ties Revealed
A Real News exclusive, first published on The Huffington PostNewly released internal CIA documents assert that former president George Herbert Walker Bush's oil company emerged from a 1950's collaboration with a covert CIA officer. Bush has long denied allegations that he had connections to the intelligence community prior to 1976, when he became Central Intelligence Agency director under President Gerald Ford. At the time, he described his appointment as a 'real shocker.' [ More... ] See all the Real News Exclusive Stories...
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Chalmers Johnson on American Hegemony
Author Chalmers Johnson -- whose "Blowback Trilogy" includes Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire (2000), The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (2004), and Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic -- on why the debt crisis is the greatest threat now facing America.
The clip is from a new film, "Chalmers Johnson on American Hegemony," in Cinema Libre Studios' Speaking Freely series. Click to watch
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