Tuesday, August 16, 2005
Advantageous Relationships
Phil Williams, a noted scholar of organized crime, wrote in the 2001 RAND publication Networks and Netwars: The Future of Terror, Crime, and Militancy about criminal networks. A sample from his section of this anthology is cited below.
"Networks provide access to people with specific resources, which create mutually advantageous information benefits and exchange relationships. This is as relevant to organized crime as to business and helps to explain why criminal organizations extend their networks into the licit world. Further, extending a network into government provides access to both information and power...
Perhaps most important of all, however, are the members of law enforcement agencies and government officials whose link to criminal networks involves exchange of information or protection for money. In the case of politicians, the exchange can be about personal gain but might also be about assistance in mobilizing the vote, support for electoral campaigns, criminal assistance in providing information about political opponents, or even in intimidating and, in extreme cases, eliminating political enemies. In the case of law enforcement personnel, or members of the judiciary, the aim of the criminals is to minimize risks by undermining enforcement efforts, suborning the judicial process, and neutralizing the criminal justice system."
To even begin to grasp the scale of corruption involved in the 9-11 coverup, one has to get beyond the sensationalist exposure of treason and vengeance (ie Richard Clarke, Valerie Plame, Joseph Wilson, and Sibel Edmonds) and consider the evidence linking people like the Bush and Saud families and the enterprises they are involved in, that an authentic investigation of 9-11 might expose. For it is these real and lucrative and criminal enterprises that are likely behind the gag orders of Edmonds and the outing of Plame and the smearing of Clarke and Wilson, and hopefully hold the key to unraveling this sordid arrangement.
"Networks provide access to people with specific resources, which create mutually advantageous information benefits and exchange relationships. This is as relevant to organized crime as to business and helps to explain why criminal organizations extend their networks into the licit world. Further, extending a network into government provides access to both information and power...
Perhaps most important of all, however, are the members of law enforcement agencies and government officials whose link to criminal networks involves exchange of information or protection for money. In the case of politicians, the exchange can be about personal gain but might also be about assistance in mobilizing the vote, support for electoral campaigns, criminal assistance in providing information about political opponents, or even in intimidating and, in extreme cases, eliminating political enemies. In the case of law enforcement personnel, or members of the judiciary, the aim of the criminals is to minimize risks by undermining enforcement efforts, suborning the judicial process, and neutralizing the criminal justice system."
To even begin to grasp the scale of corruption involved in the 9-11 coverup, one has to get beyond the sensationalist exposure of treason and vengeance (ie Richard Clarke, Valerie Plame, Joseph Wilson, and Sibel Edmonds) and consider the evidence linking people like the Bush and Saud families and the enterprises they are involved in, that an authentic investigation of 9-11 might expose. For it is these real and lucrative and criminal enterprises that are likely behind the gag orders of Edmonds and the outing of Plame and the smearing of Clarke and Wilson, and hopefully hold the key to unraveling this sordid arrangement.
