Sunday, 13 October 2002, 3:38 pm
Column: Catherine Austin Fitts
Unanswered Questions As We Connect The Harvard Watch Dots
The Real Deal with Catherine Austin Fitts
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HARVARD WATCH: A PULITZER IS IN ORDER
I want to connect the dots between the New York Times piece attached below on transfer of US government assets to private investors at below market values to the far more important story we have been getting from HARVARD WATCH ( http://www.harvardwatch.org) in recent days.
[NOTE: Harvard watch’s reports are also viewable at Harvard’s Enron-Style Partnership With Harken http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/WO0210/S00081.htm and the full Harvard Watch report at… Improper Manoeuvres at Harken During the Bush Era http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/WO0210/S00082.htm ]
Harvard Watch, a group of students and alumni at Harvard has done an outstanding job of illuminating Harvard tax-exempt investment activities in connection with Harken, Enron and Russia as well as the use of Harvard academic resources and prestige and Harvard rainmakers who cycle through government and corporations to rig policies and deals that enrich Harvard Endowment and a small circle of private investors.
Life gets interesting when Pulitzer Prize win-worthy investigative journalism comes from a volunteer network of students at Harvard University or from journalists whose stories and careers are intentionally sabotaged by the corporate media but are successfully publishing in New Zealand through Scoop Media ( http://www.scoop.co.nz/) and numerous upstart sites like it in the US and abroad. This is another sign that the upstart “real deal” media is indeed poised to capture significant market share from the corporate media.
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HARVARD: ROBIN HOOD IN REVERSE
Harvard Watch’s explosive disclosures this week on Harken are a wonderful case study of how much money it takes to subsidize rich folks who are not good at their fundamental business. When you connect the dots to Harvard Watch’s other stories, you start to appreciate how much money needs to be fraudulently stolen from everyone else to accumulate the capital it takes to float companies like Harken and successful business resumes for men like George W. Bush.
Unfortunately, this increasingly describes all of our corporate and government leadership. The more they rig the game to look good, the more expensive it gets for the us to subsidize their “success”.
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HARVARD AND HUD
As lead financial advisor to the Federal Housing Administration at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), I was highly successful in helping HUD sell their defaulted mortgages for full market value .
We were successful in helping the agency raise their prices from 35% to 70-90% of face value. GAO audits have documented that my work saved the FHA Fund at HUD over $2.2 billion in a manner that was better for communities.
Indeed, as the story of my childhood documents, the failure to resolve defaulted mortgages in a timely and honest manner destroys the wealth of honest hardworking homeowners in neighborhoods throughout the country in addition to the losses for taxpayer funded operations like FHA and Ginnie Mae .
My work stopped a whole world of private apartment owners and single family speculators from getting real estate and land at below market prices – another subsidy that results in stealing from the poor and middle class to give to the rich.
I believe that such government subterfuges are a primary reason why the rich are getting rich and everyone else is getting poorer and our environment and natural resources are deteriorating.
One of the private companies who benefited from below market deals was Ervin & Associates, a private contractor who did “work-out” deals with the defaulted owners. Ervin & Associates has spent 7 years filing a qui tam against and litigating against my company, supported by Venable & Associates, an influential Washington law firm, and at one point, by Dan Hawke as one of his attorneys.
This includes Ginnie Mae contracts generously awarded to Ervin & Associates by Ginnie Mae, HUD’s securitization operation run with the help of HUD primary supporting bank and servicer, JP Morgan-Chase.
Dan Hawke is the son of Jerry Hawke, the Comptroller of the Currency and former Undersecretary of Domestic Finance. Jerry is the guy who was looking the other way during the Enron pump and dumps and other bank related money laundering and securities scams.
Jerry worked for Bob Rubin (Harvard Corporation, formerly Harvard Management) and Larry Summers.(President of Harvard) during their stint as Secretaries of the Treasury. It was the job of Rubin, Summers and Hawke to protect the integrity of the federal credit — hence protect people like me from people like Ervin.
However, my job is now dealing with litigation with Ervin and DOJ and the ramifications of having my last business and personal wealth wiped out as a result of doing my best to do Rubin, Summers and Hawke’s job for them while they were too busy helping their pals make money — or worse.
Michael Eisenson the Insider
Another private company to benefit from Ervin & Associate type workouts was NHP, a private HUD property manager owned by Harvard Endowment and Capricorn Holdings.
Mike Eisenson (aka Insider Eisenson) of Harvard sat on the board of NHP and directed policy and day to day management .
Mr. Eisenson was also Harvard’s lead advisor on Harvard’s Harken Investment (See Harvard Watch’s study on the Harvard pump and dump on Harken at ( http://www.harvardwatch.org)).
Pug Winokur of Capricorn and another member of the board of Harvard Management — and later Harvard Corporation — was also on the NHP Board. At the time he was also the Chairman of DynCorp and the Chairman of the Finance Committee of Enron. (See Harvard Watch’s study on the Harvard pump and dump on Enron. Note: Pug Winokur was made to resign from the Harvard corporation as a result of this investigation.).
Eisenson and Winokur later sold portions of NHP — NHP (property management) to AIMCO in Denver and WMF (mortgage banking) to Prudential in New Jersey. It appears they kept continuing interests in AIMCO and — perhaps– some of the underlying HUD real estate partnerships.
Mr. Eisenson and Mr. Winokur were introduced to me by CEO Roderick Heller III . Mr. Heller was a former partner of Wilmer Cutler & Pickering, whose partner Lloyd Cutler also sat on the NHP board.
My first experience with Mike — and in the background Pug– was when Mr. Eisenson and Mr. Heller tried to switch hit me in an important transaction at the moment the final paper was to be signed.
We were having breakfast at the Harvard Club of NY. I said, no, I don’t do such deals with people who do not keep their word, not to mention what they were proposing was not good business sense for them or me. The market was later to be prove me right.
It’s funny how people who cheat on little things turn out to cheat on big things as well.
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HARVARD: UNANSWERED QUESTIONS
Harvard’s endowment grew from $4 billion in 1992 to over $18 billion in 2000.
One of the reasons why, was that Harvard did an excellent job of helping corporations and asset managers in which it was invested in transferring assets from government and, through engineering government policy, from communities and consumers at below market prices —- Russia, Enron, Harken, HUD not to mention — I suspect —a wave of pump and dump stock frauds that transferred private retirement savings out of our pension funds and into private endowments like Harvard.
At this early stage in the process of uncovering these frauds I have eight opening $64 questions for Harvard Management, its advisors and principals, and for those in the Real Deal Media who wish to uncover the truth:
QUESTION 1: What was the connection — if any– behind the Harken stock play and Harken’s unusual middle east oil investments by George W. Bush and Harvard with the unusual about face of US policy between our Ambassador affirming to Saddam Hussein that we would not interfere with his resolution of tensions with Kuwait and President Bush I’s decision to involve America in leading the Gulf War in 1990? If there any truth to rumours regarding kickbacks to Bush syndicate offshore private interests?
QUESTION 2: Who is Robert Stone and what is the nature of his relationship with George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush?
QUESTION 3: What was Harvard’s role —and Rubin and Summers role — in the greatest rigged transfer of wealth during the period — the rigging of the gold market by the NY Fed member banks? The GATA site ( http://www.gata.org) has published President Summers’ article envisioning this manipulation.
QUESTION 4: What was Harvard’s investment in the first Capricorn Holdings partnership and –therefore — was Harvard Endowment the lead investor in DynCorp with Pug Winokur creating Capricorn as a front — making Harvard Endowment a significant leader in expanding the use of the War on Drugs in North and South America to steal land and assets from communities to give to the rich?
QUESTION 5: What would the truth about Harvard’s investments through Capricorn Holdings say about Harvard’s connection to black budget operations run through the Exchange Stabilization Fund at the US Treasury with the NY Fed as agent? Why is Harvard Management co-located in the same building with the Boston Fed and the British Consulate?
QUESTION 6: Through DynCorp is Harvard also investing in — and turning a blind eye– to government contractors complicit in pedophilia and white sex slave trafficking while funded with our tax dollars?
QUESTION 7 : How did Harvard’s Endowment enjoy a $5 billion profit in one year, much of it coming from the private equity portfolio run by Mike Eisenson of Harken and HUD fame. How much of this was venture capital related the pump and dump of NASDAQ that fraudulently wiped out so many pension funds and small investors?
QUESTION 8 : What was Harvard’s involvement in reversing HUD’s portfolio reengineering efforts and the cancellation of loan sales — including place based trusts? Did Harvard’s involvement involve NHP, DynCorp or Wilmer Cutler & Pickering? What about Robert Rubin as Secretary of the Treasury and other leading government officials who came from or returned to Harvard, including both Assistant Secretary of Housing- Federal Housing Commissioner’s during the period? What was the use of Harvard academic resources to justify below market asset transfers or above market subsidies to enrich the Harvard endowment? How does the $3.3 trillion missing from HUD and DOD relate to Harvard’s profits on Enron, HUD or other profits in Harvard’s portfolio during the same period?
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STEALING FOR THE RICH: GOES ON AND ON, ON AND ON
It is hard for most Americans to fathom the extent to which —every year since I was run out of HUD and Washington — HUD transfers billions of defaulted mortgages and properties at below market value to private parties and investors for private windfall and gain of the few . I estimate opportunity costs in the many billions from the failure to properly manage the HUD portfolios since 1997.
That is before counting the disappearance of more than $59 billion from HUD accounts as reported by HUD, funds for which HUD refuses to account.
When honest government officials and honest government contractors can be run out of town the way I and many others were, there is no one to stop the thousands of ways of stealing everything. The fox is in the chicken coop.
That is because the Department of Justice and the HUD Inspector General were working for the fox. Indeed, DOJ and the HUD enforcement teams have a big business that generates fees from their enforcement actions.
Hence, timely resolutions of defaulted mortgages is bad for business at DOJ and HUD IG and HUD General Counsel.
DOJ, Ervin, Harvard, HUD and HUD Contractors — they all have gorged together on engineering public assets to private investors for below market returns.
Many Americans have a hard time fathoming that this is really happening.
One of the things that helps us understand Harvard and their manipulations is examples.
For this we can now thank Harvard Watch for their addition to the incredible efforts of reporters, researchers and truthtellers like Anne Williamson, Greg Palast, Linda Minor, Uri Dowbenko, Mike Ruppert, Kelly O’Meara, Tom Flocco, Bill Murphy, Jim Rarey, Jon Rappoport and Chris Sanders and the many real deal publishers who have published and republished their work.
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ANOTHER DISTRACTION FROM CORPORATE MEDIA?
Below is an article published today about the Department of Interior playing the same game. (See Article Below)
I don’t know who is making the money here and, am sad to say, I don’t consider the NY Times a reliable source.
I find it interesting at the very same time the NY Times is warning us about fraud at Interior, they are covering up the story of Tom White’s guilt in Enron fraud, trashing a serious reporter ( See… Jason Leopold – Shafted By The New York Times http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0210/S00063.htm ) to protect themselves and protecting now Secretary of the Army White.
This is not to mention their failing to inform their readers that more than $3.3 trillion is missing from the Department of Defense where Tom White is now supposedly leading us into a very dangerous and expensive war having successfully pumped and dumped Enron for immense personal gain.
Is this a man we want responsible for the lives of our men and women in the armed services?
Is this a man we want to have lobbying for a new draft that will result in the death and maiming our children in the service of oil pipelines, profits and kickbacks?
Many innocent men women and children around the world are going to die to protect Tom White’s and George W. Bush’s winnings — let alone those of their syndicate, including Harvard.
My personal experience with the NY Times is that I consider them to be as reliable as the supermarket tabloids — I have come to find an occasional good article therein, but that is about it. They knowingly and intentionally print lies — although omission is their greatest sin.
Whatever is going on — lets not be distracted by the little stuff. Like ABC’s recent story of DOD employees engaging in credit card fraud — in the scheme of protecting your and my retirement pay, its not the real deal.
Whenever you hear that it is the little guy stealing, there is a good chance that it is a corporate media story trying to distract you from the fact that the corporate and banking fox is in the chicken coop.
Indeed, such “scandals” are often stories cooked up so that honest government workers can be laid off and the government contractors who do the stealing can expand their power and control — and their stock option values.
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WE HAVE THE POWER
What I am highly confident of is that the game of stealing from us continues and will continue until domestic and global investors shut off the spigot.
Or, until honest people return to private and public control when enough of us vote in the marketplace with our time and attention to shift our money and support to real deal media that tells us the truth.
There is a way. There is hope. We can start using all our time, purchases, investments and affiliations like a vote. By voting in the marketplace we can shift control of resources away from the media that lies to media that tells us the truth.
We can stop buying from companies involved in this. We can move our bank deposits to honest and reliable banks in our community. We can choose to admire and associate only with people who do not behave like this. We can master how the public resources work in our local area, start solari databanks and so remove the fraud from each of 73,000 neighborhoods — one at a time.
Indeed it can be done. I send you this not because things are terrible, but because Harvard Watch has proved once again that a small group of committed people can indeed change the world.
Their leadership and their performance is breathtaking. Where CBS and ABC and the New York Times has failed us, our young people and entrepreneurs and soccer moms are rising to fill the gap.
As Jesus said, “What I can do, you can do.”
If Harvard Watch can do this, think of what one group of people in each neighborhood could do?
My prayers are with you this beautiful fall weekend,
– Catherine Austin Fitts
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WARNING: THE FOLLOWING SOURCE IS NOT ON THE SOLARI ACTION NETWORK RECOMMENDED MEDIA LIST. THIS PUBLICATION IS NOT CONSIDERED RELIABLE, LET ALONE CONCERNED ABOUT THE SAFETY AND HEALTH OF YOU AND YOUR FAMILY AND YOUR COMMUNITY
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(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)
October 12, 2002
A U.S. Agency Is Accused of Collusion in Land Deals
By JOEL BRINKLEY of the New York Times
WASHINGTON, Oct. 11 — A congressionally sanctioned consultant hired by the Bureau of Land Management to evaluate its land-exchange policies has found that agency officials collude with private developers to trade away government land at below market value.
The consultant’s report recommends referring some recent cases to the Justice Department for possible civil or criminal prosecution.
In response, officials said, the bureau has transferred Ray Brady, a senior official in the bureau’s lands program, and agreed to move the agency’s chief appraiser as well.
The bureau, part of the Interior Department, manages more than 260 million acres of public land, most of it in the West, and frequently agrees to trade parcels with private landowners who want to acquire government land for commercial development. In a typical year, the agency agrees to 200 to 250 exchanges of land.
For years, federal auditors have criticized the agency for agreeing to value its land at far less than its appraised value in order to consummate the trade, or for overvaluing the private land that is to be acquired, at the insistence of the owner.
In one trade in Nevada several years ago, a developer acquired 70 acres of public land that the bureau had valued at $763,000, then sold it the next day for $4.6 million.
After documenting another questionable case last year, the inspector general for the Interior Department urged the bureau to hire the Appraisal Foundation to evaluate its land-exchange practices. The foundation is a private group authorized by Congress to set appraisal standards for government agencies. It performed a similar function in 2000 for the Forest Service, which also manages large swathes of federal land, and found no serious problems.
The foundation’s report on the Bureau of Land Management, in contrast, accused the agency of “abuses of the public trust where there is a failure to comply with laws or to conduct orderly operations in accordance with written guidance.”
The Appraisal Foundation urged the Interior Department to remove from the bureau the function of appraising land that is to be exchanged, saying the bureau’s appraisals were so often the subject of political influence and potentially criminal abuse that the agency should no longer be allowed to carry them out.
Senior agency officials, it said, frequently gave special treatment to developers by ignoring official appraisals and adjusting prices up or down to make the trade more appealing to the developer.
A moratorium on all land exchanges should be carried out immediately, the report said, adding that the agency’s “past and currently proposed land exchanges, and their implications for the public trust, clearly warrant comprehensive investigation from outside the Department of the Interior.”
It added, “We recommend an investigation by the Department of Justice of Bureau of Land Management land activities.”
The agency’s reaction to the report was at first angry and combative, said David Bunton, executive vice president of the Appraisal Foundation. But after the two senior officials were removed, Mr. Bunton added, “they are much more receptive.”
Still, the agency’s most recent written response says, “The draft report makes numerous allegations, statements and judgments that are of an inflammatory nature, but do not appear to be well-supported by specific case examples.”
James M. Hughes, deputy director of the land management bureau, when asked today about the report’s call for possible civil or criminal prosecution, said: “I don’t know what they are basing that on. I am not sure whether they are talking about the present administration or the last one.”
Mr. Bunton said it would be up to the Justice Department to decide whether laws had been violated.
Mr. Hughes said the agency had decided to put a 90-day hold on all land exchanges to give an agency committee time to evaluate the report’s findings, but he rejected the call for a broader moratorium on exchanges.
“I was surprised by their lack of understanding of how the B.L.M. operates,” Mr. Hughes said.
The Interior Department, the bureau’s parent, is leaving it to the land management agency to respond to the report, a department spokesman said.
One land exchange cited in the report, and detailed in an Interior Department inspector general’s report last year, involved an exchange in the Red Cliffs Desert Reserve in Utah. The agency was trying to acquire a tract of land there, through purchases and trades, and an appraiser found that the land was home to Mojave desert tortoises, which the government classifies as a threatened species.
That meant the land could not be heavily developed, which lowered its appraised value. The landowners objected loudly, and so an agency appraiser in Washington took over the case. He entered into negotiation with the landowners, raising the price offered them — in violation of rules that said market-value appraisals must be used.
When the Appraisal Foundation tried to examine this exchange, its report said, “the B.L.M. was unable to provide a number of important appraisals and related file data,” adding that “key portions were reported missing.”
In another case, in Carson City, Nev., this year, the bureau office took in an employee of a private developer to work in the land management office as an agency official. His job was to manage land exchanges being pursued by the developer.
ENDS
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)
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