Senator Grassley is one of the senators from my state. I am not always in the loop with everything that happens at the federal level.
Please remind me of all of the great results from his "investigation" . . . or is it just ASGH again/still?
He does come to my county every year, but my observations are it is more of a "look at all of the great things that I am doing" as opposed to "are there any questions I can answer for you".
If you look at the history of all the big “bombshell” Congressional investigations dating back over the last 120 years, whether it be the Newport Navy Gay Sex scandal of 1919, Howard Hughes vs the US Senate 1947 and the TWA vs PanAm racket/Senate kickback scheme, the Red Scare hearings, COINTELPRO, Church Committee Hearings, House Select Committee on Assassinations, Iran Contra, Keating Five Senate scandal, Waco, and Fast & Furious, you see a pattern emerge.
The guilty parties, who already enjoy some prominent position in government, are promoted and rewarded financially, while the whistle-blowers and victims are punished, demoted, or murdered.
1919 Newport Gay Sex Scandal
In the case of the Newport Gay Sex scandal, the assistant Secretary of the Navy had the hair-brained idea to send more young sailors into the establishments to ascertain the nature of the butt-rapings and fag group sex going on there, which led to the Under Cover volunteer Navy sting personnel falling victim as well. The lower enlisted sailors were court-martialed for sodomy. One of the alleged ring leaders of the sodomite group sex clubs, an Episcopalian reverend named Samuel Kent, was found not guilty because of the manner in which the Navy used sailors as witness/participants in the sting operation, who then were encouraged to testify against the others. The testimony was found to be not printable, it was so repulsive to the judge.
Who was this US Assistant Secretary of the Navy? None other than Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the future US President. Navy brass monitored the investigation through ONI out of DC the whole time as well, keeping informed as to the status of the operation. FDR was formally rebuked by the Senate Subcommittee on Naval Affairs in 1921. The media pounded this all down the memory hole in 1932 of course.
1947 Howard Hughes vs US Senate
This was basically a bribery and kickback scandal Hughes wanted nothing to do with when he was defending his airline company TWA, in competition with PanAm, who had multiple Senators and Congressmen in their pockets and wanted to buy TWA so they would have the monopoly on the market. When Hughes refused to sell TWA to PanAm, the Senate launched an investigation into his government contracts during the War, claiming he defrauded the govt.
PanAm them used Senator Brewster as one of their intermediaries to offer the bribe/buy-out, in exchange for killing the investigation. Hughes didn’t back down, and instead testified on his own behalf, and called out the corrupt Senator in open hearings, describing the blackmail offer from Senator Brewster, and the time and place in detail where it happened. The Senate lost interest in their investigation of Hughes once he exposed Brewster for the spineless shill that he was. Most members of Congress have never heard of this scandal in generations. It was briefly exposed to the public moreso than ever before in
The Aviator with DiCaprio.
1947-1957 Red Scare
This is what people refer to as the McCarthyism persecutions, when it was really exposing actual Soviet moles woven throughout the US, Canada, and European NATO countries. The media was able to work with the moles and turn the story into one of civil rights, not counter-intelligence. It allowed senior moles in the FBI, CIA, DoD, universities, and Congress to remain and flourish, expanding their already well-established networks throughout the US intelligence and academic institutions. McCarthy was left with a bad name and is used as an example of what not do, even though they had testimony from former NKVD and CPUSA spies about how extensive the apparatus was. Those senior assets went on to hold higher levels of influence and power in government, academia, and DoD, including CIA Directorship and senior FBI officials.
COINTELPRO
This exposed how the FBI was running an illegal domestic spying and infiltration program targeting American political organizations and figures (especially Martin Luther King Jr.), with dubious methods that were so outside the Constitution as to require severe penalties. The Soviets were driving a lot of this to sew division in the US, so the organizations were the more radical types like Black Panthers, Nation of Islam, and agitators who were being used as idiots to gain attention from domestic LE in hopes of extreme responses so they could then point out how unjust the US is. The FBI and DOJ jumped right into that trap. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy even personally signed off on wire-taps of Martin Luther King Jr. The black bag units went under the Radar, RFK was assassinated, and Hoover died without any consequence in his common law dwelling next to his husband/Asst FBI Director in 1972. Some hot air was blown in the media at the time, but it was all eventually memory-holed.
1975 Church Committee Hearings
Among other things, the Church Committee exposed the existence of MKULTRA, COINTELPRO, The CIA Family Jewels assassination program (that targeted our allies on-behalf of the Soviets), and Operation Mockingbird, where the CIA operated a "systematic propaganda campaign with domestic and foreign journalists operating as CIA assets and dozens of US news organizations providing cover for CIA activity.” The Soviets also co-opted that out of the gate when it was in its infancy at Langley under direction of Frank Wisner. Church Committee also uncovered Project MINARET and SHAMROCK, where all of telecom shared their traffic with the AFSA and NSA. Those are important counter-intelligence functions, but they were of course co-opted by our enemies with their high-level moles, and used more for domestic abuses of political opponents and threats from the people wisening up to these dirty deeds.
President (unelected former VP and former Warren Commission panel member) Gerald Ford, fought hard to prevent the release of the Church Committee findings on the NSA watchlist, which included many members of Congress, but was overruled. They did classify over 50,000 pages of documents, which weren’t declassified until 1992. Most people have never heard of it, even though it was the biggest exposé of illegal domestic spying and foreign illicit activities done under the guise of intelligence in the history of the Nation. These events made Democrats especially distrustful of the intelligence institutions, which is funny given today’s events. Nobody was held to account, fired, or imprisoned other than the targets of these programs, which included murder/assassination. Several key witnessed died mysterious deaths prior to their scheduled testimony before the Senate. The Church Committee Hearings were eventually memory-holed, and would never be referenced if it wasn’t for JFK assassination researchers.
1976-1978 HSCA
The House Select Committee on Assassinations was formally commissioned to investigate the assassinations of JFK and MLK in the 1960s after many years of behind-the-scenes inquiries and tip-offs sent to members of Congress. It was promptly seeded with CIA plants who managed all the communications and formal requests of members of Congress to the federal agencies, to steer the Committee away from any real resolution and answers about the perpetrators. The official findings of the HSCA supported the WC, while many members dissented. Again, multiple scheduled witnesses from within the FBI, CIA, and Dallas died mysterious or sudden deaths prior to being able to testify. This included very high level FBI and CIA officials, journalists, and Mafia figures:
Malcolm Wallace (1971 - USMC veteran and murder convict who LBJ got off of his sentence, then used as a personal assistant/messenger/fixer/alleged hitman.)
Lucien Sarti (1972)
Charles Willoughby (1972)
Thomas Davis (1973)
Richard Cain (1973)
Dave Yarras (1974)
Roger Craig (1975 -Deputy Sheriff in Dallas who refused to recant his testimony about the 7.65 Mauser rife they found in the 6th floor TSBD. Shot himself in the chest with his dad’s .22LR rifle while his dad was out mowing the lawn, before he could testify before HSCA.)
Sam Giancana (1975)
Jimmy Hoffa (1975)
Roland Masferrer (1975)
Johnny Roselli (1976)
George De Mohrenschildt (1977-former OSS Russian-born emigré who handed the Oswalds off to the Paine family in Dallas, suck-started a shotgun before he could testify, about a year after he sent personal mail to CIA Director George H.W. Bush begging for relief from all the harassment, phone calls, guys following him and his wife)
Charlie Nicoletti (1977)
Carlos Prio (1977)
William Sullivan, the main figure in the FBI involved in the Executive Action project, and the person in the FBI who investigated Oswald, was shot dead near his home in Sugar Hill, New Hampshire, on 9th November, 1977. Sullivan had been scheduled to testify before the House Select Committee on Assassinations.
Sullivan was one of six top FBI officials who died in a six month period in 1977. Others who were due to appear before the committee who died included Louis Nicholas, special assistant to J. Edgar Hoover and his liaison with the Warren Commission; Alan H. Belmont, special assistant to Hoover; James Cadigan, document expert with access to documents that related to death of John F. Kennedy; J. M. English, former head of FBI Forensic Sciences Laboratory where Oswald's rifle and pistol were tested and Donald Kaylor, FBI fingerprint chemist who examined prints found at the assassination scene.
Several important figures in the Central Intelligence Agency died before they could give evidence to the House Select Committee on Assassinations investigations. William Harvey, head of the ZR/RIFLE project, died as a result of complications from heart surgery in June, 1976. William Pawley, who took part in Operation Tilt, died of gunshot wounds in January, 1977. David Morales, who some believe organized the assassination, died aged 53, on 8th May, 1978.
John Paisley was deputy director of the Office of Strategic Research. On 24th September, 1978, John Paisley, took a trip on his motorized sailboat on Chesapeake Bay. Two days later his boat was found moored in Solomons, Maryland. Paisley's body was found in Maryland's Patuxent River. The body was fixed to diving weights. He had been shot in the head. Police investigators described it as "an execution-type murder". However, officially Paisley's death was recorded as a suicide.
According to the journalist, Victor Marchetti, Paisley was a close friend of Yuri Nosenko. Marchetti also claimed that Paisley knew a great deal about the assassination of John F. Kennedy and was murdered during the House Select Committee on Assassinations investigation because he was "about to blow the whistle”. Most Americans have never heard of any of this because the media memory-holed it.
Iran-Contra Hearings
This was several layers of counter-Soviet and hostage-release operations that were hijacked by opportunists to import cocaine into the US, while selling US weapons to Iran. Congress had banned the Reagan WH from providing any more support to the Contras in Nicaragua, which was being done overtly from Honduras prior to the Boland Amendments of 1982 and 1984. 1982 banned any efforts to support overthrowing the Soviet-backed Nicaraguan government, but still allowed support for other activities. 1984 banned it altogether.
The Democrats were basically helping the Soviets establish another foothold in Latin America, while elements in the CIA and DoD were combating it. The Reagan WH was also trying to get US hostages freed from Hezbollah. Other elements in the CIA saw an opportunity to use illicit sources of funding to bypass any oversight from Congress as they wouldn’t need appropriations sign-off. The Iranians saw an opportunity to acquire weapons, but were under a ban from any US exports after the Mullahs took over in 1979. A former Shah-era SAVAK Secret Police agent and arms dealer/Israeli asset named Manucher Ghorbanifar proposed the exchange of US TOW and Hawk missiles for the release of the US hostages. (He’s also one of the sources for the Iraq WMD and Nigerian Yellow Cake fabricated intelligence for the Iraq War in 2003.) When disputes within the CIA between Counter-Intelligence and Middle East divisions got him burn-noticed, he leaked the Iran-Contra story to contacts who published it in media in the 1980s.
During the hearings, the Democrats pursued it as a political witch-hunt hoping to get Reagan, while ignoring the bipartisan cocaine-smuggling and money-laundering facilitated and managed by VP George H.W. Bush and Southern State Governors, included Bill Clinton in Arkansas. The prominent figure in Iran-Contra was dual-hat USMC LTC Oliver North, who was a CIA Officer managing a lot of the ground-level operations to train the Nicaraguan pilots in Mena Arkansas, while supervising US clandestine support of the Contras. There was some wrist-slapping and kabuki theater, but nobody in DC really wanted to dig too deep into the affair as it exposed their own complicity in worse crimes. A lot of whistle-blowers and witnesses primarily in Arkansas died as a result. Lots of hot air was blown, and Iran-Contra was used as a post-presidential critique of Reagan by partisan Democrats, but the true nature of the whole affair was memory-holed, having not even been investigated thoroughly by the media.
Keating Five Scandal
This was one of the many Savings & Loans scandals perpetrated by blessed-off business owners working in conjunction with members of the Senate. In this case, the ring leader was a prominent Senator who brought in other unsuspecting Senators, including Apollo Astronaut John Glenn. They bilked thousands of mostly seniors out of their retirements and bankrupted businesses in the process, while defrauding the government of $3.4 Billion. Keating had made $1.3 million in contributions to the 5 Senators, who acted on his behalf in defending him from the Federal Home Loan Bank Board.
3 of the Senators were officially criticized, while the ring leader and his main accomplice were not. The main ringleader Senator’s name was.....John McCain of Arizona and future Presidential candidate. There was minimal hot air blown during the hearings, and it was memory-holed by the media.
Waco Hearings
We all know about the ATF/FBI attack on the Branch Davidian church community in Texas in 1993. This was really an ATF and DOJ covert program named PATCON that had run amok. They initially were having mentally-deficient/borderline retarded assets recruited to sell stolen/surplus night vision devices in the late 1980s-early 1990s, but weren’t making arrests because people could smell it was some type of entrapment. DOJ was looking at budget realignment during years of tight funds, and the regional ATF offices were found to have been spending millions with no results to show for their actions.
So ATF concocted a scheme were they would conduct a massive commando-style raid and what they thought would be an easy target, and have it filmed for the National news to see in real-time. The bosses in DC would see what a great job they were doing, and questions about their budget would go away. Of course, none of this worked out as planned, and 76 men, women, and children were burned to death after the FBI Hostage Rescue Team was called in to fix the ATF’s botched raid.
Congress wanted to know who signed off on this crap, and Janet Reno acted as the fall-gal for the Clintons. Lots of hot air was blown, and the FBI and ATF managers were promoted and rewarded. Survivors of the inferno, including foreign nationals of the 7th-Day Adventist faith who traveled to Mt. Carmel Texas to be part of the religious sect of Branch Davidian, were thrown in prison and further victimized without having committed any crimes at all. DOJ patted itself on the back after the Kabuki theater and it was memory-holed by the media.
Fast & Furious Hearings
After US Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was murdered by cartel rip crews in Dec 2010, ATF whistle-blowers finally reached out to Senator Grassley to inform him they had been warning their supervisors about this for years and knew it would only be a matter of time before a fellow LEO was killed with the weapons the DOJ was ordering them to allow to walk south of the border in the hands of cartel straw-buyers. This was all part of Obama/Biden/Holder/Clinton’s WH in its efforts to implicate US FFL dealers in funneling weapons to the cartels, so that legal cases could be brought up to circumvent and eradicate the 2A further than it already has been with 1934, 1968, 1986, 1994, etc.
Lots of hot air was blown, the perpetrators within DOJ and ATF were promoted, and the whistle-blowers were sidelined, put in dead-end jobs, reprimanded, and fired. At least one of the ATF senior officials was able to hold 2 jobs simultaneously while no-showing to work in ATF, and working as a bank executive with one of the major credit card providers in the private sector. The media has worked hard to memory-hole Fast & Furious, and many gun-owners are even unaware that it happened not long ago.
So yeah, this little hit done by ATF in Arkansas isn’t going to go anywhere. It will be memory-holed, the perpetrators will be promoted, and anyone who comes forward to blow the whistle on it will lose their livelihood or life.