The powerful global network that protects gangsters like Strauss-Kahn ramps up its strategy

May 23-24, 2011 -- The powerful global network that protects gangsters like Strauss-Kahn ramps up its strategy



If Bernard Madoff had ripped off billions of dollars from Presbyterians instead of fellow Jewish investors, it is doubtful he would now be serving a 150-year prison term at the Butner Federal Correctional Complex in North Carolina, nicknamed "B'nai Butner" because of its kosher kitchen and number of high-profile Jewish inmates, including convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard, whose release to Israel is being demanded by Israeli government officials, including Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and President Shimon Peres.



The disgraced former managing director of the International Monetary Fund, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, now faces criminal charges that he sexually assaulted and forcibly imprisoned a Guinean immigrant chambermaid at the Sofitel Hotel in midtown Manhattan. Strauss-Kahn's defense strategy is beginning to emerge. Strauss-Kahn's legal team is now assembling a top-shelf group of lawyers, ex-CIA and ex-U.S. diplomat public relations shills, and, more ominously, a private investigative firm composed of a former head of the criminal division of the Manhattan District Attorney's Office and former FBI and Secret Service officials. Their job, in addition to trumping the prosecution headed by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr., the son of the late Secretary of State, will be to dig up dirt on Strauss-Kahn's victim, Nafissatou Diallo, a 32-year old widow from Guinea who is raising a 15-year old daughter on a chambermaid's salary.



As with so many modern-day neo-cons, Strauss-Kahn was once a leftist. The erstwhile French Communist helped man the barricades during the Paris student and worker riots of 1968. Strauss-Kahn eventually traded in his Molotov cocktails and Marxist hymn book for the limousines and expensive champagne. Strauss-Kahn helped to transform the French Socialist Party into a party that walked in lockstep with the global bankers and elites, a fate that also befell the British Labor Party, the Canadian Liberal Party, and America's Democratic Party. The wealthy elites merely "bought" the leftist and pro-union parties of the West and Strauss-Kahn, like Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, David Ignatieff, Bill and Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama, was there to eagerly cash the checks and IOUs.



The downfall of Strauss-Kahn, in many ways, was similar to that of one-time Republican uber-lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Both Strauss-Kahn and Abramoff have some wild notions that they were besieged by anti-Semites hiding behind every tree. Strauss-Kahn once opined that his "Jewishness" would be used by his enemies during his race for the French presidency. French and American Jewish leaders conjured up an outrageous charge that was not even used by Abramoff's most avid supporters: Strauss-Kahn was the new Alfred Dreyfus, the French military officer who was charged by France with treason in 1894, allegedly because he was Jewish.



After his indictment and conviction, Abramoff ralled a number of rabbis to his cause. Abramoff was a darling of the Orthodox Jewish community, having built the Orthodox Eshkol Academy in Maryland and funneling proceeds from his illegal deals with Indian tribes to buy "security" equipment for illegal Jewish settlers on the West Bank of Palestine. Calls for leniency in sentencing Abramoff, who once called native Americans "fucking morons, monkeys, and troglodytes," came from leading Orthodox Jewish rabbis. Like Strauss-Kahn, placed into the sex crime unit at New York's Rikers Island prison, Abramoff maintained a persecution complex while an inmate at the Federal Correctional Institution in western Maryland. Rabbi Herzl Kranz, the head of the school built by Abramoff, even suggested that Abramoff be released to his custody. Eventually, Abramoff was released to a halfway house to serve out his sentence. Abramoff's continued "punishment" was at a kosher pizzeria in Baltimore, not a treatment center for crack addicts in northwest Washington. Strauss-Kahn's home detention on 71 Broadway, in the heart of downtown Manhattan. Tough deals for those who feel persecution because of their religion.



Strauss-Kahn's defense team includes former CIA and U.S. Foreign Service officials working for the Washington, DC-based public relations firm, TD International. It was the same firm Strauss-Kahn hired in 2007 to lobby for his appointment to the IMF's top job. TD International appears to favor the sleaziest of politicians. It's client list includes former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, the darling of the neocons who stands accused of corruption. TD International's officers include W. Ross Newland III, the CIA's station chief in Bucharest in the late 1980s during the anti-Ceausescu uprising, as well as in Havana and Buenos Aires. TD International also includes its boss, CIA Operations Directorate veteran William Green, as well as former U.S. diplomats Steve Fleishmann and Ron Slimp. The head of TD International's Houston office is Fred Enochs, a former CIA officer who managed operations in over 70 countries.



TD International has worked with two sub-contractors, Glover Park Group (GPG) and Dezenhall Resources. In 2005, it was disclosed that GPG had a relationship with Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. to disrupt Nielsen ratings operations to benefit News Corp., which owns Fox Television and Fox News. GPG has also represented the governments of Turkey, Taiwan, the Republic of Georgia, and Colombia, Europe's Airbus in its U.S. Air Force tanker proposal -- which ultimately went to Boeing -- Dubai Aerospace, and the City of London in the UK. GPG's partners have included James Steinberg, the current Deputy Secretary of State; former Bill Clinton press secretary Joe Lockhart, a founding partner; Howard Wolfson, Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign's communications director; and Susan Brophy and Joel Johnson, both senior aides to President Clinton.



The links of the Clinton-linked GPG to Strauss-Kahn's defense does not bode well for the prosecution of Strauss-Kahn. Bill Clinton approved an eleventh hour pardon for a successful escapee from American justice -- Marc Rich -- the multi-billionaire dual Israeli-U.S. citizen whose pardon was arranged by his defense attorney, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, who was, himself, later convicted of obstruction of justice and perjury in the investigation of the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson.



Dezenhall Resources Ltd. of Washington is a crisis management firm. Last year. Greenpeace sued two chemical companies, Dow and Sasol, and Dezenhall. Dezenhall and another firm, Ketchum, were accused of hiring off-duty cops to spy on Greenpeace. The surveillance included "dumpster diving," the gathering of sensitive documents from the garbage. The involvement of such a firm with Strauss-Kahn's designated public relations firm could spell real trouble for the sexual assault victim as well as Vance's prosecution team. Although the New York Police Department deserves kudos for grabbing Strauss-Kahn out of the first class section of an Air France plane before he could flee to the safety of his native France, New York's "finest" have also had a sordid history of corruption. Mr. Vance and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly should carefully vet the police and detectives who may be involved in evidence gathering and retention in the case against Strauss-Kahn.



When Dezenhall teamed up with Michael Jackson's defense team amid the pedophilia allegations, the firm was termed "secretive" in media reports.



However, Strauss-Kahn's use of Guidepost Solutions LLC of New York, an international private investigation firm, poses even greater risks for the prosecution team and the Guinean assault victim. The unfolding strategy for the defense, according to press accounts, will be to portray sex between Strauss-Kahn and the chambermaid as "consensual," notwithstanding the fact that Strauss-Kahn has a sordid history of sexually harassing female journalists, other maids -- including one in Mexico -- and subordinates.



Guidepost was formed in 2010 by Bart Schwartz and former IBM security director Joe Rosetti. Schwartz is a former prosecutor for the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York. Rosetti formed the SafirRosetti firm in 2002 with former New York City Police Commissioner Howard Safir. In 2002, SafirRosetti opened a Wahsington office. It was headed by former Kroll Associates North America manager Richard Rosetti. SafirRosetti was partly owned by Omnicom, a Washington-based holding company whose empire included a number of public relations assets, including Fleishman-Hillard, Inc.; Porter Novelli International; Ketchum; Chlopak, Leonard, Schecter; Clark & Weinstock; Cone Public Relations; Mathews Media Group; Russ Reid; Steve Cram and the Washington Speakers Bureau.



Guidepost is owned by SolutionPoint International, which consults with state and federal law enforcement agencies, posing potential conflicts-of-interest in the case against Strauss-Kahn. Another major conflict-of-interest looms in the Strauss-Kahn case. Guidepost's advisers include Robert McGuire, a former New York Police Commissioner.



Last March, Guidepost Solutions acquired OSO Group, an international investigation firm, thus expanding, Guidepost's international reach. OSO Group was founded by John Gibbons, the former Chief of the Justice Department's Criminal Division for both the Northern and Eastern Districts of California and Deputy Chief of the Organized Crime and Racketeering Strike Force in Los Angeles. Gibbons also opened offices for the CIA-linked Kroll Associates in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Hong Kong. OSO Group was billed as "the first commercial counterespionage group established in the private sector."



Time will tell whether Ms. Diallo, a struggling widow and mother who left her native Guinea under difficult circumstances, will see justice prevail. However, given the nature of the team of ex-CIA spooks, G-men, private gumshoes, PR flacks, and lawyers -- all with significant political and law enforcement connections -- assembled by Strauss-Kahn and his friends, the deck appears to be stacked greatly against the sex crime victim. In what may be more ominous for the victim, the network of ex-spooks and law enforcement officials have links to those who previously served at the CIA station and U.S. embassy security detachment in Conakry, the Guinean capital. These agents-for-hire can be expected to scour Guinea for any evidence they can use to disparage the sexual assault victim and if they come up empty-handed, they can be relied on, in typical neocon fashion, to forge documents to libel the victim.



Rather than see a Madoff-style conviction and prison sentence, Strauss-Kahn appears to be waltzing himself into a situation where he will be described as the "victim" of a conspiracy. Already, there are reports surfacing that Strauss-Kahn's resignation letter sent to the IMF contained more than five paragraphs. a reported three-page letter allegedly contained information about knowledge that Strauss-Kahn obtained as IMF chief that concerns high-level manipulation of the American financial system. Strauss-Kahn's "gray mailing" may be directed more to his defense team of ex-CIA, FBI, and former high-level federal officials so that they, in turn, can threaten the U.S. government with drastic consequences if the criminal proceedings against him continue.