STEVE PIECZENIK TALKS

Ben Bradlee, Washington Post: A Formidable, Charming Adversary in the Maryland Savings and Loan Crisis of the Late 1980s!

Some of my readers have asked me about my relationship with Ben Bradlee, the iconic journalist of the Washington Post who recently died at the age of 93. I certainly miss him and his bantering, blustering ways.  However, I admit that I really did not know him well.  The only time I had any meaningful interchanges with him personally was during the 1980’s Savings & Loan crisis in Maryland.

You might remember that in the late 1980’s most of the Savings and Loan institutions which had acted as erzatz banks had been entering bankruptcy, one after another.  This tumble was started by Marvin and Neil Bush in their scam entitled the ‘Silverado S&L Crisis’ in Colorado. Once that S&L went under the sheer momentum of convoluted accounting and a paucity of assets to back up the net worth of the S& L created a panic across the USA which resulted in the eventual dissolution of almost all S&Ls. It is amazing to note how detrimental the entire Bush family [except the mother] has been to the vibrant growth of this great nation. Remember this particular crime when you think about the cherubic, disingenuous Jeb Bush, the newly resurrected ‘intellect’.

Back to Ben Bradlee….

I was given the job, upon which I insisted [as per my usual Modus Operandi] to take over the crisis management of one particular S&L in Maryland in which I had deposited a significant amount of money. In any case, without having to go into the complexities of bailing out a bank [which by the way, Bernake, Paulson and Geitner had no clue whatsoever], I had called up Ben Bradlee at the Washington Post.

Our conversation went something like an Abbot and Costello routine circling around the definitions of ‘net worth’ and ‘cash flow’.  Ben, a man with self-admitted deficiencies in banking,  told me that ‘net worth’ and ‘cash flow’ were ‘not his problem’ and ‘could not have caused a cash flow run on the Savings & Loan that I was trying to keep alive.’  I in turn went to great lengths to explain to him that our S&L had a ‘net worth’ problem and not a ‘cash flow’ problem.  And as a result of an article in his Washington Post, he had specifically created a ‘cash run’ on the S&L I was trying to save.

I ended up quite frustrated and hired a friend and major Federal Prosecutor Earl Silbert, who helped me place an Injunction/ Temporary Restraining Order against the Washington Post from publishing any more information about the S&Ls in Maryland. The upshot was devastating.  I had to meet with Bob Woodward, the self-anointed “high priest of Journalism”.  I had very little, if any respect for him.  I had learned through my thorough background checks on this Yalie that he was a former naval intelligence officer who had never had journalism training.  Woodward who’s claim to fame was that he had briefed General Alexander Haig, another nit-wit on Henry Kissinger’s staff.  It has always been my belief that Woodward and his low class partner Carl Bernstein had facilitated the downward spiral of Nixon with the help of John Dean in what I had considered a “Yalie/CIA inspired take-down of President Nixon.”  

Bob Woodward was the man whom Ben had asked me to see in order to resolve this incredibly important problem on banking.  However, Woodward, as I had anticipated ,  turned out to be as stupid and irresponsible if he were not given any ‘inside information’  from his “Skull and Bones” colleagues in the USG.  Unbeknownst to Woodward,  I had worked on the Montgomery County Sentinel ( he once worked there) where he was described by the editor as ‘completely incompetent’. 

The rest of this story was predictable. A S&L crisis started by the Texas family of Bush –Marvin and Neil—spread across the USA like a ‘wildfire’ and ended up in bankrupting the S&Ls, thanks to a Maryland Governor who conveniently disappeared; as well as,  a Federal Institution, FSLIC, the counterpart of the FDIC which went belly-up.

That was my one and only experience with the legendary Ben Bradlee.  Please remember that legends are simply stories and distorted memories that serve to warp the moments of history that no one wants to remember correctly or accurately.  I was a small player in a bigger tragedy which repeated itself under the idiot-savant, President George W. Bush Jr, in an otherwise preventable tragedy entitled The Wall Street Crash of 2008 where the banks were ‘too big to fail’! Nonsense!
Who says that history and miscreant characters don’t reappear again and again?

Woodward, like any semi-competent intelligence officer keeps on appearing everywhere to spout the verbiage of self-aggrandizement, lies, distortions and deceptions until the mainstream media reify him as the sine qua non of ‘objective journalism’.

As for the Bush family, they never cease to amaze me in their relentless efforts to destroy the Republic, once and for all.  If Barbara Bush[the mother] were to run for the Presidency, then I might support her.  As for the rest of them, they belong in the dust bin of American history. How such a pathetic family of male losers have been able to come to power is both a stigmata on our electoral system and an indictment of those who have facilitated their subsequent ascendency to the Presidency.

No one will ever forget the Bush Family’s greatest legacy to America: The 9/11 Stand Down/False Flag and the subsequent murder of 3000 Innocent Americans. Clearly not satisfied to destroy our banking system,  they went on to invade Iraq for weapons that were never there.  As far as I can remember, the Washington Post never condemned the 9/11 attack or even tried to investigate the fact that Bush Jr/Cheney had been the creators of this fiasco.  So what can I say about Ben Bradlee’s absent cry of defiance in that particular moment in time?
I was not surprised. 

He too was a “Yalie”.. “Skull And Bones” and all that other nonsense.  He never really reaffirmed his so-called moral courage which Georgetown so admired about him.

Similarly, the august NY Times, under the direction of the ersatz managers /editors Harold Raines and Bill Keller, performed as dastardly as one might have expected by a newspaper co-opted Washington DC and ‘group think’.

The final chapter will not be written in my lifetime. When the truth about 9/11 and all the other USG chicaneries that occurred under Clinton, Bush jr, and Obama, no newspaper or journalist will have been touted as ‘admirable or courageous’. That glory of uncovering the real truths of America’s collective deceptions do not belong in any one  repository of news, but to you, the American citizens, who in your own ways will uncover the lies, deceptions and conceits that have been propagated from the center of this New Roman Empire—Pax Americana—Washington DC which will inevitably languish into intellectual and financial bankruptcy; as befits moral cowards.

So now the so-called ‘Conspiracy Media,’ we the people, will arise until there will be no one hero or media format, but a simple revolution of truth and honesty, at whatever cost of lives that may take.

Let me end this post by quoting the words of the great German writer, Goethe, who had pinpointed the nature of our collective problems, centuries ago:
“We, the people are NEVER DECEIVED. WE DECEIVE OURSELVES!”

Let’s terminate our self deceptions once and for all and rid ourselves of these noisome politicians who try to destroy our way of life.