In the video, Ventura discusses material from his recent memoir Don’t Start the Revolution Without Me!. He repeats the following claims:

(1) Shortly after taking office in January 1999, Gov. Ventura received a request for an interview by the CIA.

(2) The interview was attended by 23 agents or representatives of the agency, only some of whom were willing to identify themselves. They were particularly interested in how Ventura, a former Navy SEAL and pro wrestler, came to be elected as an independent, outsider candidate.

(3) The CIA has operatives planted inside every state government as permanent state employees. In Minnesota, the relevant person occupied an upper management position. When this individual retired during Ventura’s tenure, another CIA agent took his place.

A CIA spokeswoman confirmed that the meeting took place but claimed it was a “training exercise,” according to the St. Paul Pioneer Press. Regarding claim (3), she said: “We are federal employees so that, I think, is a little bit off. We are federal employees; we are not anywhere near being state employees.”

[This seems a classic non-denial denial. Yes, qua CIA agents, they are federal employees. Nevertheless, the key question goes unanswered in her response: does the CIA have agents occupying state government positions?]

One might think that such provocative assertions by a famous former state governor would at least be reported by the national media, if not investigated. But I was unable to find any mention of Ventura’s allegations in the New York Times or the Washington Post. A LexisNexis search found only one national story about Ventura’s claims, a January 4, 2008 AP article on his memoir by Patrick Condon (reprinted here by the Huffington Post). Entitled “Vintage Ventura on Display in New Book,” the story portrays the work as a “rant” that digresses into Ventura’s “obsessions” and “fascination with conspiracy.”

Condon’s original article went out on the AP’s state and local news wire. A second version, with the revised title “Vintage Ventura on display in new book, ranting against everything from government to religion,” was carried on the AP’s entertainment news wire on January 5.

As the Obama administration attempts to overhaul the nation’s health care, energy, and financial sectors, it faces the growing leverage of the Blue Dog Coalition—the conservative, fifty-two-member faction of the House’s Democratic caucus—to moderate, or obstruct, its goals.

The Center for Public Integrity (CPI) recently published an investigation into the Blue Dogs and the money behind their rising power (emphasis added):

So far this year, the Blue Dog Political Action Committee is on track to shatter all its fundraising records; in fact, the total for the first six months of 2009 — more than $1.1 million — is greater than what was raised in the entire 2003-04 fundraising cycle. Furthermore, according to analysis by the Center for Public Integrity of CQ MoneyLine data, the energy, financial services, and health care industries have accounted for nearly 54 percent of the Blue Dog PAC’s 2009 receipts (up from 45 percent in 2004). . . .

In the 2008 cycle, their PAC received $508,800 from the health care sector (up 90 percent from 2005-2006 cycle), $451,500 from the financial services sector (up 371 percent from the previous cycle), and $238,300 from the energy sector (up 48 percent). In just the first half of 2009, the PAC all told took in $1,058,750 in contributions from political action committees. Health care PACs have already kicked in $297,500 to the Blue Dog PAC; energy PACs, $162,500; and financial services PACs, $134,500.

Democratic fundraising is up across the board, but there’s a reason why the Blue Dogs have been especially successful at pulling checks from the health, financial, and energy sectors: to stymie the building wave of reforms that big business doesn’t like and to protect or increase its federal subsidies and legal advantages.

Consider, for example, how the Blue Dogs fought for ethanol, the global-warming boondoggle that enriches the corn interests and
. . . (wait for it) . . . Goldman Sachs:

Sometimes the Blue Dog influence creeps into public view. This was the case as the House considered the climate change bill earlier this summer. Blue Dog [Collin] Peterson of Minnesota and some of his agriculture-sector supporters were not happy with the initial draft. As chairman of the Agriculture Committee, Peterson was particularly concerned about how the Environmental Protection Agency was going about regulation of renewable fuels such as ethanol. Peterson announced that he and his bloc of allies — including every Democrat on his committee — would vote against the bill unless the draft was altered to include protections for the industry. The leadership complied.

While the Blue Dogs took no official position on this bill, two facts are worth noting: first, 18 of the 28 Democrats on Peterson’s Agriculture Committee are Blue Dogs and, second, the Blue Dog PAC had — for the first time ever — received $4,500 in PAC contributions from the nation’s second-largest ethanol producer, Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), in the 2008 cycle. The Renewable Fuels Association, a trade association in which ADM is a key member, cheered Peterson’s efforts and backed the underlying bill. Colin O’Neil of the Center for Food Safety, which opposed the changes, said Peterson “was integral in formulating language in the bill and pulling the Blue Dogs and the ag community in.” Peterson and six other Blue Dogs from the Agriculture Committee voted for the bill when it reached the floor. The bill passed the House, 219-212; their votes were the margin of victory.

And while it may seem that this was a victory for the ethanol industry, it was also a victory for many in the financial services community. Goldman Sachs, for instance, has significant investments in advanced ethanol development. The firm was another new donor to the Blue Dog PAC in 2008 with $10,000, and also has been lobbying the climate bill.

There is one problematic aspect to CPI’s otherwise insightful article. The authors quote Billy Tauzin, former U.S. Representative, Blue Dog co-founder, and current president and CEO of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufactures of America (PhRMA):

[The Blue Dogs have] helped foster much-needed bipartisanship and middle ground. … Above all else, they have consistently provided a moderating voice on Capitol Hill.

They don’t, however, mention the circumstances under which PhRMA hired Tauzin on January 3, 2005—the very day he left Congress—at a reported $2.5 million a year:

Two months earlier, Tauzin had played a key role in shepherding the Medicare Prescription Drug Bill through Congress, which had been criticized by opponents for being too generous to the pharmaceutical industry.

This link was explored at great length in an April 1, 2007 interview by Steve Kroft of 60 Minutes. The report, Under the Influence, pitted Rep. Walter B. Jones (R-N.C.) and Rep. Dan Burton against Tauzin and accused him of using unethical tactics to push a bill that “the pharmaceutical lobbyists wrote”. Their claim is supported by CSPAN video, the fact that it was the longest roll call in the history of the House of Representatives, and the 3 a.m. voting time. Along with Tauzin, many of the other individuals who worked on the bill are now lobbyists for the pharmaceutical industry.

UPDATE: Rep. Maxine Waters (D – Calif.) points out that it was Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s chief of staff, who recruited many of the Blue Dog Democrats during his tenure as head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

UPDATE 2: The Washington Post followed up on CPI’s report today with a detailed look at the Blue Dogs and their role in the health-care debate.

The article notes that the Blue Dogs receive 25 percent more in contributions from the health-care and insurance sectors, and $63,000 more from the health-care sector than other Democrats, “putting them closer to Republicans in attracting industry support.”

The piece frames the issue around Rep. Mike Ross (D – Ark.), a favored guest at events funded by the health-care industry:

Rep. Mike Ross of Arkansas made clear that he and a group of other conservative Democrats known as the Blue Dogs were increasingly unhappy with the direction that health-care legislation was taking in the House.

“The committees’ draft falls short,” the former pharmacy owner said in a statement that day, citing, among other things, provisions that major health-care companies also strongly oppose.

Five days later, Ross was the guest of honor at a special “health-care industry reception,” one of at least seven fundraisers for the Arkansas lawmaker held by health-care companies or their lobbyists this year, according to publicly available invitations.

As the health-care reform debate continues into the fall, don’t forget that many of the Blue Dogs represent small states whose health-care markets are dominated by local monopolies. For example, Blue Cross Blue Shield controls 75 percent of Mike Ross’s Arkansas, where health-care premiums rose 66 percent between 2000 and 2007.

Take, for example, the alleged pay-for-play scandal at the American Conservative Union. The organization offered FedEx lobbying support in a labor dispute for a $2–3 million fee, which would include, among other things,

Producing op-eds and articles written by ACU’s Chairman David Keene and/or other members of the ACU’s board of directors. (Note that Mr. Keene writes a weekly column that appears in The Hill.)”

In his most recent column for The Hill, a Capitol Hill newspaper, Keene responded to the story:

Last week an article in another publication alleged that I made an unethical proposal as chairman of the American Conservative Union to a potential contributor that could be read in part to imply that I might write a column in this space favorable to the contributor’s position.

Upon seeing this allegation I read the solicitation for the first time, found the inference appalling, and reprimanded the ACU staffer who wrote it. I have never used this column to benefit my clients or non-profits and never will.

When approached for comment by WhoWhatWhy, Keene flatly denied that ACU ever offers op-eds or articles to contributors and claimed he hadn’t seen the letter to FedEx before it was sent. However, he acknowledged that he would be willing to write about topics important to himself and to ACU, “even if ACU was receiving contributions because of our stand on the issue.”

Keene insisted that motive is critical to assessing such conduct:

This may sound more complicated than it should, but the distinction is incredibly important. Motive here is often hard to fathom . . . but is all important. Indeed, it is motive that lies at the base of the Politico allegations. Did ACU oppose the NLRA amendment because we wanted to raise money from FedEx or did we do so because we thought forced unionization is a bad idea?

Politico thought they could read a nefarious motive based on the reporter’s conclusion that we were prepared to change our position if we didn’t get the contribution we were seeking. Had we been willing to do that his reading might well have been correct, but he was wrong in terms of what we did and why. Those who dislike us and some cynics will always assume the worst relative to motives and there is little anyone can do about that, but others looking at the facts realize that things aren’t always as smarmy as some think.

Keene seemed to assume that if he didn’t have the illicit motive in question, then penning an op-ed favoring FedEx’s labor position would be perfectly acceptable—even if FedEx contributed $2 million to his organization. But surely this would at least appear to raise a conflict of interest. So why isn’t the mere appearance problematic enough to rule out publishing such a piece?

[It's also worth noting that the letter to FedEx was signed not by just any "staffer" but by Executive Vice President Dennis Whitfield. Why would Whitfield feel comfortable signing a letter offering the benefit of supportive op-eds and articles to FedEx, without first clearing it with Keene?]

I also approached The Hill‘s Editor in Chief Hugo Gurdon, who publishes Keene’s weekly column, to ask whether his newspaper would retain Keene in its lineup.

“Our columnists understand it is a basic rule,” said Gurdon, “There is editorial integrity and our column isn’t used for any other purposes.” Thanks to his newspaper’s long relationship with Keene, Gurdon said he took Keene at his word when he claimed he was appalled to learn of the solicitation letter. Gurdon said his newspaper planned to continue running Keene’s column, though he warned ACU that the newspaper’s name could never be used in future solicitation letters.

Even if Politico’s story gave a false impression, as Keene claimed, it is clear that Keene leads a lobbying organization that solicits and accepts money from corporate interests. So why does Gurdon wish to give column space to such a person? Doesn’t the mere act of hiring a lobbyist as a columnist in itself raise the appearance of a conflict of interest that undermines the paper’s claim to “editorial integrity”?

Walt takes up the topic by articulating the “Ten Commandments for Ambitious Foreign Policy Wonks”—the ironclad laws about what they can and can’t say, if they want to ascend the foreign-policy hierarchy to a senior fellowship at the Brookings Institution or a position in the State Department.

To take two examples, consider first the fourth commandment:

#4: Thou Shalt Not Question the Desirability of American Primacy. For over half a century, a core principle of American grand strategy has been to retain what the Truman administration called a “preponderance of power” in America’s favor. Scholars have sometimes debated whether “primacy matters,” but nobody ever runs for President promising to “make America Number Two,” and nobody who wants to rise in the foreign policy establishment should ever suggest that maybe the United States might be better off if it weren’t so dominant. (I happen to like U.S. primacy myself, but I wish the topic got debated a bit more often).

Note how Walt feels compelled to indicate he favors U.S. primacy and how poorly he articulates the opposing, “taboo” view. Surely the point is not whether anyone thinks America should be “number two” or whether America “might be better off if it weren’t so dominant.” Rather, the concern is whether someone can be critical at all about American primacy and still have a foreign-policy career.

Here’s the ninth commandment:

#9: Thou Shalt Not Question the Right of the United States to Intervene in Other Countries. Foreign policy elites in the United States routinely declare that the United States is committed to international law and is a principled supporter of the UN Charter, and we are quick to condemn most other countries when they use force in violation of these principles. But the United States has a long record of using military force against countries or regimes that it opposes, and voices challenging this basic principle tend to be few and far-between. So when the Bush administration was mobilizing the country for war with Iraq, only a handful of people objected on the grounds that the war was simply illegal. Instead, liberal inteventionists came up with elaborate legal and moral justifications for it. If you do take issue with this idea, you’ll probably get labeled an idealistic leftwinger and your career prospects will correspondingly diminish. Of course, a realist like me isn’t surprised when great powers don’t feel especially bound by the fine points of international law, but I do wish we were less hypocritical about it.

Walt again feels the need to note that he’s a “realist” on this topic (defined here, or perhaps more aptly here)—i.e. he’s a loyal member of the foreign-policy establishment. He just wishes his colleagues were more open about their view that international law means little to them.

Of course, if you are truly a thorough-going realist, like Saint Henry (Kissinger), hypocrisy about international law should be embraced, not rejected, if it furthers American power. Moreover, the public rejection of such hypocrisy by America’s leading foreign-policy experts can be useful as well: Foreigners will appreciate their refreshingly honest candor and be more apt to trust them the next time they lie or dissemble. As the eighth commandment has it, all foreign-policy professionals honestly, truly, absolutely care about human rights and democracy.

Walt concludes the piece by remarking how bucking establishment views can actually benefit one’s career. He cites Obama’s rise to the presidency after rejecting the Iraq war—a project favored by a majority of the foreign-policy establishment—as his prime example. Of course, he ignores the fact that those who supported that unnecessary, costly, and reckless project didn’t see their careers harmed by that endorsement. Peter Beinart, for example, continued to ascend, to a senior fellowship at the Council on Foreign Relations.

It’s also worth noting that Obama made his dramatic antiwar speech as an Illinois state senator, not a U.S. senator, and his position didn’t prevent him from voting to continue funding the war or supporting military escalations elsewhere (Afghanistan) when he became a national figure. Obama is hardly representative of foreign-policy radicalism.

Politico’s Mike Allen has caught the organization in an embarrassing pay-for-play scandal:

The American Conservative Union asked FedEx for a check for $2 million to $3 million in return for the group’s endorsement in a bitter legislative dispute, then flipped and sided with UPS after FedEx refused to pay.

For the $2 million plus, ACU offered a range of services that included: “Producing op-eds and articles written by ACU’s Chairman David Keene and/or other members of the ACU’s board of directors. (Note that Mr. Keene writes a weekly column that appears in The Hill.)”

The conservative group’s remarkable demand — black-and-white proof of the longtime Washington practice known as “pay for play” — was contained in a private letter to FedEx , which was provided to POLITICO.

The letter exposes the practice by some political interest groups of taking stands not for reasons of pure principle, as their members and supporters might assume, but also in part because a sponsor is paying big money.

In the three-page letter asking for money on June 30, the conservative group backed FedEx. After FedEx says it rejected the offer, Keene signed onto a two-page July 15 letter backing UPS.

Go ahead and read the rest of the article and the letters linked above. It will be interesting to see whether The Hill, one of Capitol Hill’s daily newspapers, decides to retain Keene’s column.

This is by no means an isolated incident. For other examples of opinion selling, consider the Heritage Foundation’s dramatic shift in favor of Malaysia, as reported by the Washington Post, or the merchandising of pro-Azerbaijan op-eds by Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R – Texas), Christian conservative leader Gary Bauer, and Ambassador Elizabeth Jones.

Over Independence Day weekend, Sergey Aleynikov, a former Goldman Sachs computer programmer, was arrested by the FBI for allegedly stealing the firm’s high-speed stock- and commodities-trading programming code and uploading it to an unidentified Web server in Germany.

At Aleynikov’s July 4 bail hearing, Joseph Facciponti, an assistant U.S. Attorney, told the federal magistrate judge:

The bank has raised the possibility that there is a danger that somebody who knew how to use this program could use it to manipulate markets in unfair ways.

Bloomberg’s Jonathan Weil asks the obvious question (emphasis added):

All this leaves us to wonder: Did Goldman really tell the government its high-speed, high-volume, algorithmic-trading program can be used to manipulate markets in unfair ways, as Facciponti said? And shouldn’t Goldman’s bosses be worried this revelation may cause lots of people to start hypothesizing aloud about whether Goldman itself might misuse this program?

For more on the details of this intriguing story, I recommend this post from the Zero Hedge financial blog and this article from Reuters business columnist Matthew Goldstein.

How might Goldman Sach’s program allow the company to manipulate stocks and commodities markets? Blogger DonDi at the TPM community blog offers a hypothesis: Goldman Sachs was using its special access to the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets (known informally as the “Plunge Protection Team”), established after the 1987 crash to prevent future meltdowns, to “front-run” the rest of the market.

The Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee has requested that the S.E.C. and the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission investigate Goldman Sachs’s trading program.

Wherever this story leads, it is clear that a media backlash against Goldman Sachs is building.

POSTSCRIPT: To put Goldman Sach’s second-quarter profit report in proper context, I recommend Glenn Greenwald’s review of recent history.

UPDATE: The New York Times has picked up the story:

Nearly everyone on Wall Street is wondering how hedge funds and large banks like Goldman Sachs are making so much money so soon after the financial system nearly collapsed. High-frequency trading is one answer.

And when a former Goldman Sachs programmer was accused this month of stealing secret computer codes — software that a federal prosecutor said could “manipulate markets in unfair ways” — it only added to the mystery. Goldman acknowledges that it profits from high-frequency trading, but disputes that it has an unfair advantage.

Yet high-frequency specialists clearly have an edge over typical traders, let alone ordinary investors. The Securities and Exchange Commission says it is examining certain aspects of the strategy.

“This is where all the money is getting made,” said William H. Donaldson, former chairman and chief executive of the New York Stock Exchange and today an adviser to a big hedge fund. “If an individual investor doesn’t have the means to keep up, they’re at a huge disadvantage.”

Although this account has gained widespread acceptance, there’s reason to be skeptical. As I noted recently in an update, the Washington Post reported that the program “was not a covert action” and concerned “a intelligence-collection activity run by the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center.”

In this light, consider the following post from Time magazine’s Swampland blog (emphasis added):

But two former ranking CIA officials have told TIME that there’s another equally plausible possibility: The program could have required the Agency to spy on Americans. Domestic surveillance is outside the CIA’s purview -– it’s usually the FBI’s job – and it’s easy to see why Cheney would have wanted to keep it from Congress.

Both officials say they were never told what was in the program, and that they’re only making calculated guesses. But their theory gibes with other reports, quoting ex-CIA officials, that say the program had to do with intelligence collection, not assassinations.

“People may want this to be about hit squads bumping off shady Saudis in Geneva, but that’s very unlikely,” says one official. “More likely, it was a plan to spy on some suspicious American citizens or organizations, without telling the FBI.”

The correct answer to the mystery, as this Swampland post rightly acknowledges, must account for former Vice President Dick Cheney’s order that the C.I.A. not inform Congress about the program. Why would Cheney make such a demand about an assassination program that targeted enemies against whom the U.S. was at war, that was similar to the drone attacks the military openly uses, and that was not even operational? Could Cheney expect the program to cause such uproar that he was wiling to risk breaking the law in not briefing Congress?

Even supposing the “C.I.A. hit squad” story is true, questions remain. Why did the C.I.A. assassination program remain at the planning stage? Was it because the White House decided to pass responsibility instead to the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), the military special operations unit that, according to Seymour Hersh, ran an “executive assassination ring” that reported to Cheney and had no congressional oversight? For much of time in question, JSOC was run by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who is currently heading our efforts in Afghanistan. Are we conducting assassinations there today? And if we are, does Congress approve? Why isn’t it prone to the same grossly immoral conduct as previous covert assassination programs?

Whatever the answers to these questions, there can be no doubt that the American people deserve a full investigation.

It is not clear where the report of the embassy in Managua began. But in the past two years, it has made its way into congressional testimony, think tank reports, press accounts, and diplomatic events in the United States and elsewhere.

“Iran recently established a huge embassy in Managua,” Nancy Menges of the Center for Security Policy told a House committee last year. “Iran’s embassy in Managua is now the largest diplomatic mission in the city,” wrote Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute.

The terrifying news even made it into a speech by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in May. Is Iran’s new Managuan fortress merely a step in broadening Iranian appeal and swaying Central America away from American influence? Or could it be a secret forward-operating base for terrorist deployments? Perhaps part of a plot to destroy Israel?

There’s just one problem with such speculations: THE MEGA-EMBASSY DOESN’T EXIST.

But Bayardo Arce, a senior economic adviser to Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, likened the elusive “mega-embassy” to the nonexistent weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. “It doesn’t exist. They deceived the secretary of state,” Arce said. “We don’t have an Iranian mega-embassy. We have an ambassador in a rented house with his wife.” . . .

“Who told Hillary that? Someone misinformed her,” said Francisco Aguirre Sacasa, a leader of the opposition Constitutionalist Liberal Party and head of a legislative foreign affairs committee. “I never cease to be astonished that a country with such intelligence-gathering capacities could fall for such a canard. What now? Is Obama going to start talking about the Axis of Evil?”

Here’s a question worth pursuing for an intrepid political or foreign-policy reporter: How did this embarrassingly wrong rumor make it into a speech by the Secretary of State? The article says that Clinton heard about the embassy during a meeting in the region, according to a State Department spokesman (who when informed of the mega-embassy’s non-existence, replied: “If it turns out this is not happening, that’s good news.”) Is that really true? If so, who said it? And does that person have any connection to right-wing think tanks, intelligence agencies, or propagandistic organizations in the United States?

Whatever the answer, the story serves as a welcome warning that the peddling of false propaganda does not depend on who sits in the Oval Office or which party occupies the White House. There are structures and institutions in place who spend a lot of time and money spreading false information, and they didn’t disappear after last year’s election.

POSTSCRIPT: In no way do I mean to suggest that Iranian activity in Central and South America isn’t worth close, careful monitoring. On this score, see Todd Bensman‘s provocative 2007 article on Iran’s outreach in the region.

During last spring’s controversy over whether congressional leaders were briefed by the CIA over its use of “enhanced interrogation techniques,” Russ called for an investigation into the congressional briefing process. It is now all the more clear that such an investigation is a must.

Yesterday, CQPolitics reported that CIA Director Leon Panetta admitted to the House Intelligence Committee that the agency misled Congress about “significant actions” from 2001 all the way to late last month, according to a letter to Panetta from seven Democrats on the committee. House Intelligence Chairman Silvestre Reyes (D-Texas) claimed in a separate letter that the CIA “affirmatively lied to” the committee on at least one occasion.

It remains unclear what the CIA misled Congress about, but Rep. Rush Holt (D–N.J.), a member of the House Intelligence Committee and co-signer of the letter, said in an interview quoted by the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal:

We wouldn’t be doing this over a trivial matter . . . it’s serious stuff. . . . Our reason for writing the letter in the first place has to do really with the integrity of Congress and the balance of powers.

Both newspapers add that President Obama has threatened to veto a pending Intelligence Authorization Bill that would strengthen congressional oversight and grant access to information about covert activities to the entire House and Senate Intelligence Committees (rather than just the eight leaders of both houses of Congress and of the two committees). Though Rep. Holt expressed surprise at Obama’s stance, it seems in keeping with the president’s strong positions on protecting executive power and secrecy.

UPDATE: Today the Washington Post reports that the dispute concerns an “on-again, off-again” intelligence program for collecting information about terrorist suspects:

Current and former administration officials familiar with the program said it was not directly related to previously disclosed high-priority programs such as detainee interrogations or the warrantless surveillance of suspected terrorists on U.S. soil. It was a intelligence-collection activity run by the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center, officials said. It was not a covert action, which by law would have required a presidential finding and a report to Congress.

Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee, including Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) and Rep. Rush Holt (D-N.J.), are calling for an investigation.

Stanford got his regulatory-free branch—one of his most lucrative franchises—despite the vehement objections of the state’s top banking lawyer:

”There was no lawful way that office should have been opened,” said Richard Donelan, the state’s chief banking counsel who opposed the deal.

Donelan said he argued that the Stanford plan violated state law, and that there were concerns about money laundering in the Caribbean and “whether Stanford’s bank was in conformance with the law.”

In this case, and so many other recent instances of financial corruption, the question is not how government regulators fell asleep on the watch, but rather how they aided and abetted fraud. Along these lines, I recommend the work of William K. Black, including his excellent book, The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One.

Two aspects of the Herald article are worth further consideration:

[1] Guess which law firm brokered the deal for Stanford? Miami-based Greenberg Traurig, of Jack Abramoff fame.

For more on Greenberg Traurig’s history of corruption, click here. And for the firm’s role in South Florida’s real estate crash, click here.

[2] Shortly after Florida Banking Director Art Simon signed off on the Stanford deal, the Conference of State Bank Supervisors (CSBS) renewed the accreditation of the Florida Division of Banking, according to a March 11, 1999 story by Business Wire.

What is CSBS? Quoting the Business Wire article (emphasis added) . . .

CSBS is the national association of state officials responsible for chartering, regulating and supervising the nation’s 6,951 state-chartered commercial and savings banks and 419 state-licensed branches and agencies of foreign banks.

Obviously CSBS bears some responsibility for this failure, and its 1999 accreditation deserves some scrutiny. Was the Stanford deal even mentioned? Even though it rendered the Stanford branch a “foreign trust representative office” (the only one in Florida, according to the Miami Herald) rather than a bank, the Florida Division of Banking was still responsible for monitoring the branch to make sure it followed the guidelines of the deal.