Jay Taylor just sent out a letter to his subscribers describing a meeting at the Committee for Monetary Research Education, Inc. and his fellow speaker, Stanley Sporkin, as “known for his uncompromising work as a lawyer and a judge.” Sporkin was the CIA general counsel during Iran Contra. Sporkin is a fixer and he is good at it. He left the bench in 2000, several years before a Houston federal district judge found that Sporkin had knowingly allowed a false affidavit to be filed when he was CIA General Counsel, framing Edwin Wilson falsely.
The following two links are from the website: whereisthemoney.org – The Stanley Sporkin Internet Hotseat:
Inquiry in Case of Arms Dealer Justice to Probe Conduct of Prosecution Washington Post, November 1, 2003
Opinion on Conviction; United States of America vs. Edwin Paul Wilson, Judge’s Opinion, US District Court, Southern District of Texas, October 27, 2003
I had the pleasure of sitting in Stanley Sporkin’s court for several years while he did a brilliant job of intentionally destroying my company, Hamilton Securities. Our litigation was a case study in how to make sure that a target is financially destroyed before it is are allowed to know its accuser, what they were accused of or have an opportunity to address allegations let alone have those allegations documented with evidence. Although it was expensive, watching Sporkin lie, trick and try to coach Department of Justice attorneys as they failed in their efforts to falsify evidence, gave me an invaluable education in the enforcement and judicial machinery of economic warfare.
Sporkin had our entire digital infrastructure seized and put under court control, including software tools and databases that allowed me and my team to track and analyze government cash and credit flows at a local level throughout America. It was that phenomenal digital infrastructure that taught me where the incredible opportunities are to reengineer government investment in a way that could significantly increase our quality of life and sustainability in America — not to mention ending drug trafficking and the war on drugs and the family and community pain and suffering they cause. After many years, when I finally got our records back, guess what? The most valuable software tools were gone — disappeared under court control.
When Sporkin retired from the bench, he joined Weil Gotshal, the law firm that represented Enron during the bankruptcy. He has since left the firm.
Why do I tell this story? As discussed in an earlier post, transparency is essential for the evolution of cooperative economic behavior. If someone like Sporkin can remain socially acceptable to people committed to monetary integrity, then crime will continue to pay and the extraordinary gapping between our cost of capital and the cost of capital of insiders like those who pull Sporkin’s strings will continue to grow, irrespective of what monetary reforms are discussed.
In a nutshell:
No transparency of dirty players = crime pays = more slow burn. This means that transparency of illegal activities and players is a condition precedent to truly successful mission investing.