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What about McCain’s Terrorist Sympathizer Pals?

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I know Gordon Liddy, he’s paid his debt, he went to prison, he paid his debt, as people do. I’m not in any way embarrassed to know Gordon Liddy.

Frankly, I’m underwhelmed with David Letterman’s performance last night. Yeah, yeah, Letterman actually put McCain on the spot about his ties to Gordon Liddy. But Letterman didn’t have the proper rejoinder to McCain’s claim that Liddy has paid for his crime–that (like Ayers) Liddy has no remorse for those crimes.

Does he regret burgling the offices of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and setting in chain the resignation of a President? A vein twitches angrily on one of his scales, but he replies in a level voice, "No."

Letterman should also have pointed out that the only reason Ayers didn’t "pay his debt" is because the federal government was engaging in the same kind of illegal surveillance that McCain has supported under the Bush Administration and so couldn’t convict Ayers.

But since Letterman did bust McCain for Palin’s claim that Obama "palled around" with terrorists, plural, it’s probably worth pointing out the number of terrorists McCain pals around with. 

The media has already talked about McCain’s ties to John Singlaub and the US Council for World Freedom, which had ties to Nazi collaborators and right-wing death squads. McCain claims to have resigned the board in 1984–though he remained supportive until 1986. And he attended the group’s events after the time, in 1984, when Jack Anderson (whom Gordon Liddy plotted to kill) exposed the group’s ties to far-right radicals.

A news article and two documents tie McCain to the council in 1985, a year after he says he resigned. The group’s Internal Revenue Service filing in 1985, covering the previous year, lists McCain as a member of the council’s advisory board. In October 1985, a States News Service report placed McCain, Rep. Tom Loeffler, R-Texas, and an Arizona congressman at a Washington awards ceremony staged by the council.

This was McCain palling around with right-wing extremists who served as a front to supply funds to terrorists. 

And then there’s Carl Lindner, the CEO of Chiquita during a period when it was knowingly providing material support to terrorists in Colombia, first FARC and then AUC. Read more →

Banana Republicans: $1.7 Million to Right Wing Death Squads, $2 Million to McCain

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I did a whole series of posts on how Chiquita Banana paid off a right wing (and before that, a left wing) terrorist group in Colombia rather than pull out of the country. Here’s a good summary post, that shows that:

  • Chiquita had been paying protection money going back to 1989–including two and a half years of payments to the right wing AUC after it had been declared a terrorist organization (and, yes, those payments came after 9/11 changed everything)
  • In spite of warnings from outside lawyers that Chiquita "Must stop payments," Chiquita continued those payments
  • Michael Chertoff reported told Chiquita he would "get back to them" on the funding terrorists issue (which he never did)
  • A subpoena for the Republican-linked Chiquita may have mysteriously never gotten served by the Bush DOJ
  • Chiquita may have been shipping cocaine back to the US in its freighters as part of its deal with the right wing death squads

Which is just another way of saying that Chiquita is just as corrupt a company as it has been for the last century.

Today HuffPo points out that not only was Chiquita a very Republican company, the CEO of that company from 1984 to 2001, Carl Lindner, happens to be a big McCain donor.

The co-host of a recent top-dollar fundraiser for Sen. John McCain oversaw the payment of roughly $1.7 million to a Colombian paramilitary group that is today designated a terrorist organization by the United States.

Lindner must like McCain slightly more than he likes those Right Wing Death Squads: whereas he oversaw $1.7 million in payments to the AUC, he oversaw $2 million in payments to McCain from just one recent fundraiser.

Late last week, Lindner co-hosted a $25,000-per-person fundraiser for McCain and the Republican Party in the wealthy Indian Hills neighborhood of Cincinnati, Ohio. The event raised about $2 million; Lindner also serves on McCain’s Ohio Victory Team.

Maybe Lindner is more generous with McCain because the Senator has done political favors for Lindner in the past:

However, in the past, McCain has done favors on Lindner’s behalf. Last May, the Washington Post reported that in the late 1990s, McCain "promoted a deal in Arizona’s Tonto National Forest involving property part-owned by Great American Life Insurance, a company run by billionaire Carl H. Lindner Jr., a prolific contributor to national political parties and presidential candidates."

Read more →