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Roger Stone: Oozing Behind The Sleaze — Part I

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posted on Oct, 16 2016 @ 04:20 PM
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The Making of a Political Monster

According to Roger stone, his career as a political "dirty trickster" can be traced way back to his elementary school days. In 1960, Stone's school was holding a mock election and because his parents were JFK supporters, the then eight year-old Stone concocted a scheme that he thought could benefit his candidate:


"I remember going through the cafeteria line and telling every kid that Nixon was in favor of school on Saturdays," Stone says. "It was my first political trick."


A few years later, a neighbor gave Stone a copy of Goldwater's The Conscience of a Conservative and he immediately self-radicalized. At the tender age of thirteen, Stone was taking the train on weekends from his home in Lewisboro, New York to NYC where he was a volunteer for William F. Buckley's (failed) mayoral campaign.

Starting in high school and later after moving to DC to attend George Washington University, Stone was involved in just about every Republican youth group ever — Teenage Republicans, College Republicans, Young Republicans and the Young Americans for Freedom. It was in 1967, that Stone was first introduced to Richard Nixon by Gov. John Davis Lodge who'd appointed Stone the Connecticut Chairman of Youth for Nixon and who Stone cites as an early "mentor."

Later at GWU — where he completed approximately two years of college despite a five year enrollment — Stone found his opporunity to get into the campaign of his idol Richard Nixon.

In 1970, Stone invited Nixon aide and principal Watergater Jeb Magruder to speak to the YAF. Afterward, Stone approached Magruder for a job and was brought onto the campaign as a volunteer for Chuck Colson at the Committee to Re-Elect the President (CRP aka CREEP) (the folks behind the Watergate break-in) and later, Stone was assistant to Herbert "Bart" Porter, an overseer of Nixon's political hit squad.

At the age of nineteen, Roger Stone had become the youngest of Nixon's team of "dirty tricksters."

On Porter's orders, Stone traveled to New Hampshire and using the fake name "Jason Rainier," made a $200 contribution to one of Nixon's primary opponents, Pete McCloskey, in the name of the Young Socialist Alliance (his instruction was actually to use the claim involvement in the "Gay Liberation Front" but Stone it seems, was hesitant to masquerade as a homosexual). He then drafted a letter under the "Jason Ranier" pseudonym, in which he expressed his support for McCloskey and sent the letter along with the receipt for the contribution to William Loeb, the pro-Nixon publisher of the Manchester Union-Leader in order to paint McCloskey as a man with radical Left-wing ties.

Stone traveled to Louisville, Kentucky and using the codename "Jason", hired twenty-six year-old Michael McMinoway who became known as "Sedan Chair II" to infiltrate the Ed Muskie, Hubert Humphrey and eventually, the McGovern campaign, paying him $5800 over five months to spy on various Democratic HQs — including the campaign HQ of McGovern where he'd landed a job in security — reporting any useful intel to his handlers. During this time, Stone also brought on a fellow student named Theodore Brill who was paid $150 a week to spy on "radical groups."

Some of the worst of the squad's tactics were used against the Democratic Senator Edwin Muskie of Maine (later Carter's SoS) whose bid for the Democratic nomination was aborted in the wake of the Canuck Letter — another faked letter sent to the Manchester Union-Leader in 1972 — after Muskie broke down into tears while delivering a speech in front of the newspaper. (CT fun-fact, there is a rumor that CIA agents put drugs in Muskie's coffee that morning) I've never seen it confirmed nor am I aware of Stone admitting to having sent the letter but it seems possible if not likely that he was the source.

After Nixon won the 1972 election, Roger Stone was given a position in the Office of Economic Opportunity.

Despite the gulf in ages and Nixon's resignation following the Watergate scandal, Stone and Nixon became longtime friends. Former Nixon aide Frank Gannon said of their relationship:


"Nixon talks to Stone about politics the way he talks to David Eisenhower about baseball . . . Nixon is voracious for political information."


In fact, Stone came to be a kind of "informal liason" between Nixon and the political world in the 1980's, orchestrating dinners and coordinating with Reagan's 1984 campaign (for which Stone's firm was contracted) to use Nixon as an informal adviser.

Interesting (and important side note):

In 1967, the then Executive Producer of the The Mike Douglas Show struck up a conversation with show guest Nixon following his appearance. That conversation led to the Executive Producer, Roger Ailes, becoming Richard Nixon's media consultant. Though it would be decades before his dream was fully realized in Fox News, Ailes had been planning it fo r decades:


A memo entitled “A Plan for Putting the GOP on TV News,” buried in the the Nixon library details a plan between Ailes and the White House to bring pro-administration stories to television networks around the country. It reads: “Today television news is watched more often than people read newspapers, than people listen to the radio, than people read or gather any other form of communication. The reason: People are lazy. With television you just sit—watch—listen. The thinking is done for you.”

edit on 2016-10-16 by theantediluvian because: (no reason given)



posted on Oct, 16 2016 @ 04:21 PM
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While Nixon is undoubtedly his idol — he has a tattoo of Nixon's face on his back — in many ways Roger Stone molded himself after a man he would meet some years later, Roy Cohn.

After Nixon

After the fall of Nixon, Roger Stone went to work on the staff of Sen. Bob Dole. However, a column by Jack Anderson about Roger Stone's involvement with the Watergate scandal led to Dole firing him in 1974.

In 1975, Stone founded the National Conservative Political Action Committee with childhood friend Terry Dolan (prominent Christian Right figure and proponent of "family values" who was secretly a homosexual and died of AIDS in 1986) and later business partner Charles Black (campaign adviser to Reagan, Bush 41, McCain in 2008, Romney in 2012 and Kasich this year).

Stone was the Reagan campaign's National Youth director during the 1976 failed bid for the GOP nomination and in 1977, he left NCPAC when he became the president of the Young Republicans. After a stint working for legendary pollster Arthur Finkelstein, Stone was hired by Ronald Reagan's 1980 campaign director, John Sears, to work as the campain's political director for NY, NJ and CT.

It was in 1979, in this capacity, that Stone would meet another major influence in his life, Roy Cohn, and through him Cohn's protege, the young Donald Trump. As Stone recalled in an interview appearing in the New Yorker (2008):


"I was invited to a party by a socialite named Sheila Mosler, and Roy Cohn was there." "Roy was a Democrat, but he was an anti-Communist and a master of public relations, and he wanted to help me with Reagan. He told me to come see him at his town house"


Stone took Cohn up on his invitation and met with him later at his office (his office was below his personal residence if you're wondering — Cohn didn't really seperate his business and personal lives with the exception of being a closeted gay man). From Stone's account of their meeting:


“I go into Roy’s office,” Stone continued, “and he’s sitting there in his silk bathrobe, and he’s finishing up a meeting with Fat Tony Salerno,” the boss of the Genovese crime family. Stone went on, “So Tony says, ‘Roy here says we’re going with Ree-gun this time.’ That’s how he said it—‘Ree-gun.’ Roy told him yes, we’re with Reagan. Then I said to Roy that we needed to put together a finance committee, and Roy said, ‘You need Donald and Fred Trump.’ He said Fred, Donald’s father, had been big for Goldwater in ’64. I went to see Donald, and he helped to get us office space for the Reagan campaign, and that’s when we became friends.”


The influence of Roy Cohn on both Roger Stone and Donald Trump is important to understand their tactics and their worldviews. The rest of the story from above continues in an Weekly Standard article from 2007 entitled Roger Stone, Political Animal "Above all, attack, attack, attack--never defend."


"I'm still kind of a neophyte," Stone admits, "still kind of thinking everything's on the level. 'Cause the truth is, nothing's on the level." At a 1979 meeting at Cohn's Manhattan townhouse, he was introduced to major mobster and Cohn client Fat Tony Salerno. "Roy says to Tony, 'You know, Tony, everything's fixed. Everything can be handled.' Tony says, 'Roy, the Supreme Court' Roy says, 'Cost a few more dollars.'" Stone loved Cohn: "He didn't give a s-- what people thought, as long as he was able to wield power. He worked the gossip columnists in this city like an organ."

Stone, who going back to his class elections in high school has been a proponent of recruiting patsy candidates to split the other guy's support, remembers suggesting to Cohn that if they could figure out a way to make John Anderson the Liberal party nominee in New York, with Jimmy Carter picking up the Democratic nod, Reagan might win the state in a three-way race. "Roy says, 'Let me look into it.'" Cohn then told him, "'You need to go visit this lawyer'--a lawyer who shall remain nameless--'and see what his number is.' I said, 'Roy, I don't understand.' Roy says, 'How much cash he wants, dumbf--.'" Stone balked when he found out the guy wanted $125,000 in cash to grease the skids, and Cohn wanted to know what the problem was. Stone told him he didn't have $125,000, and Cohn said, "That's not the problem. How does he want it?"

Cohn sent Stone on an errand a few days later. "There's a suitcase," Stone says. "I don't look in the suitcase . . . I don't even know what was in the suitcase . . . I take the suitcase to the law office. I drop it off. Two days later, they have a convention. Liberals decide they're endorsing John Anderson for president. It's a three-way race now in New York State. Reagan wins with 46 percent of the vote. I paid his law firm. Legal fees. I don't know what he did for the money, but whatever it was, the Liberal party reached its right conclusion out of a matter of principle."

I ask him how he feels about this in retrospect. He seems to feel pretty good--now that certain statutes of limitations are up. He cites one of Stone's Rules, by way of Malcolm X, his "brother under the skin": "By any means necessary." "Reagan got the electoral votes in New York State, we saved the country," Stone says with characteristic understatement. "[More] Carter would've been an unmitigated disaster."

In the 1980s, Stone and his old friends Charles Black and Paul Manafort hung out their shingle--later to be joined by other skilled knife-fighters like the late Lee Atwater. Stone was often rivals with Atwater, though he affectionately cites his rules: "'Lie low, play dumb, and keep moving.' As opposed to mine, which are 'Admit nothing, deny everything, launch counterattack.' Often called the Three Corollaries."

edit on 2016-10-16 by theantediluvian because: (no reason given)



posted on Oct, 16 2016 @ 04:21 PM
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In 1980, Stone formed a new "political consulting" firm with two other GOP operatives: Paul Manafort, an attorney with DC law firm Vorys, Sater, Seymour and Pease as well as a Gerald Ford White House staffer, Ford campaign delegate-hunt coordinator and southern coordinator, Reagan for President Committee (1977-1980); and his friend Charles Black, Jr, advisor to the Reagan campaign in 1976 and 1980. The new firm was called Black, Manafort and Stone (later Black, Manafort, Stone and Atwater and then for quite some time Black, Manafort, Stone and Kelly) and the immediately rose to prominence as the premier Washington lobbying firm.

Stone has characterized the firm's business plan thusly:


"Black, Manafort, Stone, and Kelly, lined up most of the dictators of the world we could find."


This was no exaggeration on the part of Stone. One of their first clients was Ferdinand Marcos who they billed at a rate of about a million a year to help the notorious despot stay in power. They did "PR" work for Mobutu See Seko, notorious for chopping off limbs. The 1992 report The Torturers' Lobby by the Center for Public Integrity details some the firms involvements with dictators, despots and warlords in Nigeria, Kenya, Angola, Turkey and the Philippines. I hope to follow up with details of the firm's numerous involvements — like running disinformation campaigns to downplay terrorism funded by the Pakastani ISI — in a future OP but my focus here is specifically Stone and like Black's, his work for the firm tended to be more domestically oriented.

In 1981, after revelations that incumbent Republican Representative Thomas Evan of Delaware was one of three politicians who has been involved with former nude model and lobbyist Paula Parkinson — with allegations of sex for influence — Evans, who'd been caught on a golf trip with the woman, hired Roger Stone to smear his opponent, Tom Carper.

Roger Stone shopped around a fabricated story about Carper abusing his wife and stepchildren to the Delaware papers, he couldn't find a taker so he went to the New York Post who who did run with it. Ultimately the "trick" failed as accusations over the planted fabrication blew up in Evans's face.

In 1984 Stone, along with partners Manafort and Black, were employed by the Reagan campaign. Stone served as an senior adviser to the the 1988 Jack Kemp for President campaign of which Charles Black was manager. The firm wasn't shy about playing every side of any contest. For instance, while Black and Stone worked the Kemp campaign, another senior partner in the firm, Lee Atwater (who'd joined in 1985) was the campaign manager for George H.W. Bush and Manafort served as directer of operations. The men were so prolific in their electioneering that one congressional aide remarked to Time Magazine in 1986:


"Why have primaries for the nomination? Why not have the candidates go over to Black, Manafort & Stone and argue it out?"


(It should be noted that though Black, Manafort, Stone and Atwater were GOP operatives, another senior partner, Peter Kelly would often work for Democrats like Patrick Leahy and Bob Graham in the same election cycles. Kelly has been a senior political adviser to... Al Gore, Bill Clinton and John Kerry)

The firm later worked for Bush's 1988 campaign and it was here that Stone became entangled in another legendary election "trick" — the infamous "Willie" Horton attack — an account of a black man on a prison furlough who attacked and robbed a white couple, stabbing the man and raping his fiancee twice. It was overt racial fearmongering right down to the name "Willie" which William Horton was never known to have used and denied ever being known as. Though Bush's opponent, Michael Dukakis, was governor at the time that Horton was furloughed, the program had been created by the former administration and Dukakis was not in anyway inolved with the release. Nonetheless, Stone's partner Lee Atwater, Bush's campaign manager is on record remarking:

"By the time we're finished, they're going to wonder whether Willie Horton is Dukakis' running mate."

A 1992 Time article later implicated Stone but he claimed that he actually advised Atwater against running the Horton ad which had been produced with PAC money. The information came from two campaign staffers who presented it Atwater (one, Andrew Card, later became Bush's Chief of Staff) and Stone. The ads were created at the direction of Citizen's United founder, Floyd Brown, who is the founder of right-wing news site Western Journalism (and author of of the 1992 book Slick Willie: Why America Cannot Trust Bill Clinton). Side note: Brown employed current CU President and Trump deputy campaign manager David Bossie who was later accused of stalking the family of woman who'd been a law student of Bill Clinton. The woman had committed suicide and Bossie repeatedly harassed her family, while attempting to "investigate" a rumor of a possible affair.

It was also revealed in an FEC investigation into PAC/campaign coordination that the producer of the video, Larry McCarthy, was a former employee of Roger Ailes.

Stay tuned for the Part II in which I'll discuss:

Stone's involvement in the fall of Elliot Spitzer (and disgraceful harassment of Spitzer's elderly father), the Clinton "Rape PAC" organized for the Trump campaign (you thought they were doing it for free to "correct the record?" Nope. It was planned months in advance), Stones bigotted Twitter rant that got him fired from the Trump campaign, the multiple appearances on Alex Jones's show, the WikiLeaks connection and more.
edit on 2016-10-16 by theantediluvian because: (no reason given)



posted on Oct, 16 2016 @ 04:33 PM
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originally posted by: theantediluvian
Frankly folks, it's embarassing that for a conspiracy forum, so many people are so utterly in the dark about the people around Trump.



FYI, I looked up Stone back when he and Trump had their bizarre, public 'falling out.'

People are probably not as 'in the dark' as you seem to believe. Much of what you have here is not new to me.


edit on 16-10-2016 by MotherMayEye because: (no reason given)



posted on Oct, 16 2016 @ 04:43 PM
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Excellently presented thread as always.

But most people know who Stone is, both sides have people surrounding them who aren't the most savoury.

I appreciate it's gone well past the time to change candidates, but please everyone, choose the third candidate.



posted on Oct, 16 2016 @ 04:49 PM
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posted on Oct, 16 2016 @ 04:51 PM
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posted on Oct, 16 2016 @ 05:09 PM
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posted on Oct, 16 2016 @ 05:09 PM
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Never going to support Democrats. I will always vote against them. Disgusting party. Amazing how my candidates never win, even local elections but I'm upper middle class and doing great. You have to move your coin around folks. Otherwise they will try to pick pocket you. Be smart out there. She is going to win but if you take precautions now Democrats pass over you. Not a big deal if you start preparing right now.

If you are poor no real hope for you unfortunately. Democrats make a bunch of bold promises but never deliver. Look at all their big inner cities. Complete mess. Detroit, Chicago, LA. High crime, taxes, people leaving the city while taxes are still increasing....so sad.



posted on Oct, 16 2016 @ 05:18 PM
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posted on May, 12 2017 @ 03:50 PM
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a reply to: theantediluvian

Interesting fella this Stone.

Trump swimming with sharks, thats for certain.



posted on Jul, 23 2017 @ 01:56 PM
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a reply to: theantediluvian

Dredging this thread up because I wonder if you have you seen 'Get Me Roger Stone?'

Link

If yes, then I'd like to hear your thoughts.

If no, then I hope you can watch it so I can discuss it with you!



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