HOUSTON — The longtime district attorney in Willacy County, Tex., is not retiring from public office quietly after a defeat at the polls this year. Instead he has issued a flurry of indictments against his local political enemies, and then for good measure filed charges against Vice President Dick Cheney and former Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales.
Mr. Cheney was charged with “engaging in an organized criminal activity” in connection with the 2001 beating death of an inmate by two fellow inmates at one of the privately run federal detention centers in the county, which is near the Mexican border, court officials said.
The indictment, brought by the district attorney, Juan Angel Guerra, asserts that Mr. Cheney has some culpability in what happened because he had invested in the GEO Corporation, a company in Florida that owns and operates the federal detention center in Raymondville where the death occurred.
For his part, Mr. Gonzales is accused of using his influence to stop an investigation into corruption during the building of another federal jail used by marshals. The indictment also says both Mr. Cheney and Mr. Gonzales “committed the crime of neglect” because, it contends, illegal immigrants were ill-treated at detention centers.
On Wednesday evening, a judge set an arraignment date for Friday for Mr. Cheney and Mr. Gonzales, but said they could have their lawyers appear on their behalf. The judge, Manuel Banales, said he would not listen to motions to quash the indictments until that hearing, because Mr. Guerra was not in court. Full story here.
Courtesy The Globe and Mail (Canada)
A group of U.S. bureaucrats who collected billions of dollars in royalties from energy companies operated in a culture so bereft of ethics they regularly consumed cocaine and marijuana at industry gatherings, had sexual relations with oil company representatives and routinely received gifts from energy firms, including divisions of Chevron Corp., Royal Dutch Shell PLC and BP, according to an internal investigation.
“We discovered that between 2002 and 2006, nearly one-third of the entire [division] staff socialized with, and received a wide array of gifts and gratuities from, oil and gas companies with whom [the division] was conducting official business,” the report found.
Some of the employees held side jobs as industry consultants while others provided confidential information about upcoming government contracts to company representatives, the investigators said.
The director, Gregory Smith, allegedly “engaged in illegal drug use and had sexual relations with subordinates, and in consort with industry,” the report said. Mr. Smith, who retired in 2007, allegedly had employees buy him cocaine during work hours, referring to the drugs as “office supplies.” He allegedly acknowledged his drug use to investigators, calling it “episodic,” and admitted inappropriate relations with some staff, the report said.
The employees worked in a division of the Denver-based Minerals Management Service, or MMS. MMS, part of the Department of Interior, collects royalties and lease payments from energy companies operating on federal land.
The division in question has about 50 employees and runs a special program that collects royalties on an in-kind basis and then sells the oil and gas on behalf of the government. The section sold about $11-billion (U.S.) worth of oil and gas last year.
Article Continues @ Sourced Site.
Courtesy Rawstory:
Cindy McCain’s addiction to prescription painkillers emerged into public view 14 years ago with a well-orchestrated PR campaign designed to preserve her husband’s political future.
Aside from a lengthy contemporary investigation from Phoenix’s alternative weekly and occasional mentions since then, the addiction back-story — including ample questions about what John McCain knew, when he knew it and questions over whether he was complicit in the cover-up — has gone largely untold. Until now.
Tom Gosinski, a former employee of the medical-aid charity Cindy McCain used as personal supplier of Percocet and Vicodin, is speaking out publicly for the first time.
On Wednesday, Gosinski sat down with RAW STORY and other outlets to tell his story and distribute copies of his personal journal from his time with the American Voluntary Medical Team in the last half of 1992, where he voiced ever more acute concerns and frustrations over McCain’s drug use and its impact on her mood and job performance.
“My journal wasn’t to trash Cindy or anything,” he says. “My journal was kept because I came in contact with so many people. It was a way of keeping an ongoing biography of all the people I met, so I could refer back to it.”
He says he can’t buy the official McCain camp line that Cindy’s drug abuse was kept from her husband, he saw and heard too much for any of their stories to make sense — like the time Cindy was allegedly taken to the hospital after an overdose and John rushed in to berate the doctors and nurses there before moving Cindy to their secluded Sedona ranch. Then there were the Hensley family interventions and the fact that Cindy’s drug abuse came to be something of an open secret among employees of the charity.
Article Continues @ Sourced Site.
