Soros, Foley and the FBI
By Richard Poe
FrontPageMagazine.com | October 11, 2006
THE SCANDAL over Congressman Mark Foley's ***ual misconduct has generated
some unexpected blowback. It has pitted George Soros' Shadow Party
against
the FBI.
The Soros-funded group CREW has effectively declared war on America's top
federal law enforcement agency. CREW has called on the Justice Department
to
investigate the FBI. In an October 5 statement, it accused the Bureau of
having "fabricated and disseminated" falsehoods about CREW, as part of an
FBI "cover-up" of the Foley scandal. (1)
In the war of words now raging between CREW and the FBI -- CREW through
its
press releases, and the FBI through anonymous press leaks - each accuses
the
other of obstructing justice in the Foley investigation.
CREW started the fight with a surprise announcement on October 2. It
stated
at a press conference that it had obtained some of Foley's incriminating
e-mail correspondence on July 21 - two months before ABC News broke the
Foley story on September 28. CREW claimed that it had sought to interest
FBI investigators in the Foley e-mails, but to no avail.
"Since the FBI has known about Rep. Foley's emails since July, the
question
arises: Did the administration help to cover up Rep. Foley's conduct and
leave a potential ***ual predator on the loose?..." asked CREW executive
director Melanie Sloan. "The American public deserves to know not just
how
and why members of Congress failed to take action to protect the
youngsters
entrusted to the care of the House of Representatives, but also why the
FBI - an agency charged with protecting the public - failed to safeguard
other youngsters from a potential ***ual predator." (2)
FBI sources retort that it was CREW, not the Bureau, that was playing
games
with the Foley evidence. According to the Wa****ngton Post of October 5:
".unidentified Justice and FBI officials told re****ters that the e-mails
provided by CREW were heavily redacted and that the group refused to
provide
unedited versions to the FBI. One law enforcement official - speaking on
the
condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation - also told The
Wa****ngton Post the FBI believed that CREW may have received the e-mails
as
early as April and that the group refused to tell the FBI how they were
obtained." (3)
CREW says the G-men are lying. It has posted on its website a
point-by-point refutation of their account. (4)
CREW - whose initials stand for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in
Wa****ngton - presents itself as a non-partisan, public interest group,
which
litigates and brings ethics charges against corrupt politicians. Its
website (citizensforethics.org) states that CREW, "targets government
officials who sacrifice the common good to special interests. We will help
Americans use litigation to ****ne a light on those who betray the public
trust." Despite this idealistic language, the degree to which CREW's
litigators target Republicans and spare Democrats lends credence to the
view
expressed by many Wa****ngton observers that CREW is little more than an
attack machine for George Soros' Shadow Party.
Shadow Party Agenda
The Shadow Party is a tightly-coordinated network of private groups
through
which Soros disburses campaign cash and exerts influence over the
Democrats.
In 2004, the Shadow Party raised more than $300 million for Democrat
candidates. This gave Soros unprecedented power to bend the Democratic
Party to his will. After the election, Soros operative and MoveOn PAC
director Eli Pariser declared, "Now it's our party: we bought it, we own
it." (5)
Shadow Party operative Robert Borosage expressed a similar view at the
time.
A hard-left militant during the '60s, Borosage now serves as co-director
of
the Campaign for America's Future, a leftwing activist group which has
received more than $300,000 from Soros' Open Society Institute. In a
November 29, 2004 article in the Marxist journal The Nation, Borosage and
Nation editor Katrina Vanden Heuvel wrote:
"[P]rogressives drive this party now - we provide the energy, the
organizers, the ground forces, the ideas, and much of the money. We should
organize the opposition [against Republicans]. Progressives should mount
a
powerful assault on Republican boss Tom DeLay." (6)
It is probably no coincidence that CREW executive director Melanie Sloan
was
thinking along the same lines. "Since I started [with CREW], the main
thing
I wanted to do was to go after Tom DeLay," Sloan told the Wall Street
Journal in May 2005. "DeLay is my top target." The Journal re****ts:
"A former assistant U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia,
Ms.
Sloan engineered an ethics complaint against Mr. DeLay in the
House,
asked the Internal Revenue Service to audit a pair of Mr. DeLay's
fund-raising committees and sued the Federal Election Commission
to
obtain more information about possible financial ties between Mr.
DeLay
and a Kansas utility. She also urged the Justice Department to
investigate Mr. DeLay for his role in promising fund-raising help
to a
family member of Nick Smith, at the time a Republican House
representative from Michigan, in exchange for Mr. Smith's vote on
Medicare legislation." (7)
CREW was joined in its campaign against DeLay by a swarm of Soros-funded
groups, all posing as "non-partisan" watchdogs - among them Common Cause,
Democracy 21, Public Citizen, Public Campaign and the Campaign Legal
Center.
(8) The above-named groups have all received large contributions from
Soros'
Open Society Institute. Common Cause has received $650,000; Democracy 21,
$300,000; Public Citizen, $275,000; and Public Campaign, $1.3 million.(9)
The Campaign Legal Center acknowledges on its Web site that it too has
received "generous financial sup****t" from the Open Society Institute.
Most of CREW's targets have been Republicans. On those few occasions when
it picks fights with the left, it tends to target people like Green Party
candidate Ralph Nader, whom Democrat leaders regard as competitors or
spoilers. (10)
On March 14, 2006, The Hill newspaper re****ted that CREW had targeted 14
Republican legislators for lawsuits or ethics complaints, but only one
Democrat (Sen. Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas). (11)
Democrat Operatives
CREW was founded by Democrat activists Norm Eisen and Louis Mayberg.
Eisen
is an attorney. Mayberg is president and co-founder of the Bethesda, MD
mutual fund management firm ProFund Advisors LLC.
CREW's 990 IRS filing for 2001 lists its three founding directors as Louis
Mayberg, Mark Penn and Daniel Berger. Mayberg and Berger are prominent
Democrat donors. Mark Penn is a top Democrat strategist and pollster.
Penn played a decisive role in Bill Clinton's 1996 campaign, and served as
head of message and strategy for Hillary Clinton's 2000 Senate campaign.
Penn is a fellow of Simon Rosenberg's New Politics Institute (NPI), an
im****tant Shadow Party think tank. He is president and co-founder of the
polling firm Penn & Schoen Associates.
CREW deputy director Naomi Seligman Steiner formerly served as
communications director for Media Matters for America, yet another group
with strong ties to Soros' Shadow Party.
Melanie Sloan became executive director of CREW in 2003. She is a
long-time
Democrat operative, having served as a former aide to Rep. John Conyers
and
Senator Joe Biden.
Before joining CREW, Sloan served as nominations counsel for Joe Biden's
Senate Judiciary Committee (1993); counsel for the Crime Subcommittee of
the
House Judiciary Committee for Charles Schumer (1994); minority counsel for
the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee under John Conyers
(1995-1998); and assistant U.S. district attorney for the District of
Columbia (1998-2003).
Soros Money
George Soros' Open Society Institute contributed $100,000 to CREW in
January
2006. (12) More im****tantly, CREW has re****tedly received substantial
funding through the Democracy Alliance, a network of leftwing millionaires
and billionaires organized by Soros. According to the Wa****ngton Post:
"...a Democracy Alliance blessing effectively jump-started
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Wa****ngton (CREW)....
Alliance officials see CREW as a possible counterweight to
conservative-leaning Judicial Watch, which filed numerous
lawsuits
against Clinton administration officials in the 1990s." (13)
Other CREW funders include the Tides Foundation, the Barbra Streisand
Foundation, the Arca Foundation, the David Geffen Foundation, the Wallace
Global Fund, the Mayberg Family Charitable Foundation, the Woodbury Fund,
Inc., and the Sheller Family Foundation - all institutions distinguished
by
their sup****t for far-left causes. (14)
"The Mark Foley scandal is over, as the disgraced Congressman enters rehab
and leaves politics forever," states an October 4 e-mail to Nation
subscribers. "But. the Republican Congressional Leader****p scandal is
most
definitely not over."
The Congress is well rid of Foley. No one is sorry to see him go. But,
for
the Shadow Party, the Foley scandal is merely a means to an end. Their
goal
is regime change. They will not rest until government power rests in
Soros'
hands. And they will use any pretext to achieve that ambition.
Until now, CREW has met little resistance. The confidence with which it
challenges the FBI bespeaks its long track record of success. It remains
to
be seen whether the FBI will crumble as easily before CREW's onslaught as
have so many Republican leaders.
NOTES:
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