A Narco News Five Star Chile Alert

The Narco News Bulletin

"The name of our country is América"

-- Simón Bolívar

Hidden Agendas by Electoral Delinquents:

By Refusing to Reveal their Funders, US Pollsters and Political Consultants Stan Greenberg, Rob Allyn, Doug Schoen and Marcela Berland...

1. Violate Mexican Law

2. Violate the Ethics Code of the American Association of Public Opinion Research (AAPOR)

Exhibit A:

Stanley Greenberg with the PRI

White House Pollster Stan Greenberg

The involvement of White House political consultants Stanley Greenberg and James Carville in the Mexican presidential campaign was documented earlier this spring by The Narco News Bulletin.

Specifically, Carville and Greenberg have been consultants to ruling party candidate Francisco Labastida of the PRI.

The following text is from our report of May 30th:

The Narco News Bulletin, on the 16th memorial of the assassination of Mexican journalist Manuel Buendía, publishes an English translation of today's column by Carlos Ramírez, Mexico's most widely-read newspaper columnist, that calls to re-open the investigation of the 1984 narco-assassination.

Ramírez explores the allegations that a key member of Mexico's ruling party, Manuel Bartlett, was responsible for the crime and its cover-up.

The Narco News Bulletin adds commentary and analysis aimed at Washington:

1. Why the silence by US Ambassador Jeffrey Davidow on the Bartlett matter today? When Bartlett was a political rival of PRI presidential candidate Francisco Labastida, Davidow attacked him. Now that Bartlett is on the team of the PRI candidate -- who enjoyed a closed-door audience last Saturday with Davidow in Mexico City -- the narco-ambassador has fallen silent.

2. It is time for US political consultants Stanley Greenberg and James Carville to clarify their roles with the Labastida campaign that is now run by Bartlett: Are they in or are they out? And if they have left the campaign, why the silence about what happened? (Full disclosure: Carville and the publisher of The Narco News Bulletin are old friends.)

-- from Narco News, May 30, 2000

His Wife Mary Matalin (who is not meddling in the Mexican elections) calls the Ragin' Cajun by the affectionate name of Serpenthead: James Carville

On June 23rd, the last day under Mexican law that polls on the July 2nd election could be published, Stanley Greenberg (who, like Carville, has been in hiding on the Labastida question ever since the "dinosaur" wing of the PRI reassumed control, last Spring, over the campaign) reared his head again.

According to the June 24th edition of El Universal:

"In Washington the Greenberg firm indicated that the PRI candidate was at the head of the preferences in the election....

"In the case of Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas of the PRD, in the fourth and last poll by the US daily Dallas Morning News, reached his highest level so far with 25 percent.... The organization Greenberg Quinlan Research indicated that Cárdenas would receive 13 percent of the vote.

"This last polling firm would not say who financed the poll, although it is widely known that at least until a short time ago it worked for the campaign of Labastida. Stanley Greenberg, one of the principal partners in the business, was the pollster of the first election of President William Clinton...."

Narco News Commentary: Because the PRI could lose the July 2nd election, and must resort to widespread election fraud in these final days, Greenberg and Carville have been hiding. Greenberg's lastest act of meddling -- releasing a poll without disclosing who paid him to do it -- demonstrates that he is still involved on behalf of Labastida.

Furthermore, The Narco News Bulletin has learned that James Carville has maintained a full-time staff in Mexico City and is still active on Labastida's behalf.

The photo below, from the cover of the respected Mexican news weekly, La Crisis, demonstrates the kind of campaign that Carville and Greenberg directed in the November 7, 1999 PRI primary:

"How Labastida's Fraud Happened"

"The Big Finger for Labastida: The representative of Francisco Labastida in a Chiapas polling place violates the secrecy of the vote and signals to a farmer with her finger to mark the ballot over the photo of Labastida."

-- From La Crisis, November 13, 1999

In the November 7th primary between Labastida and Tabasco Governor Roberto Madrazo, a massive operation of voter fraud was carried out. Labastida "won" overwhelmingly by the PRI's official result. The PRI also claimed, loudly, that 10 million voters participated in the primary, when that, simply, was not true. In fact it was a huge distortion.

The ballot boxes, as they say in Mexico, were "pregnant," that is, the number of votes grew between the closing of the polls and the reporting of the results. This is why, in the analysis by Subcomandante Marcos published this week on Narco News, the Zapatista spokesman wrote: "good health to you, and see if there are some birth control pills. There is more than one ballot box that needs them urgently."

Carville and Greenberg, thus, are complicit in the massive election fraud that is being constructed for July 2nd, 2000 in Mexico.

In spite of the fact that saying so probably means that the Narco News publisher won't be receiving any more invitations to dine and drink with Carville in The Palms restaurant in Washington DC, we must voice our profound disappointment with ol' Serpenthead in particular: Inside the United States, Carville offers a colorful democratic discourse. We suggest, fraternally, that James read the latest communique from Marcos, who has proven himself with this essay to be the greater Jeffersonian democrat than our disgraced operator from Louisiana.

The arrogance and impunity of US consultants James Carville and Stanley Greenberg, and their colonial attitude against democracy in Mexico, however, has been exceeded by the extremely bizarre behavior in recent days by three other US consultants who have appeared on the Election Fraud 2000 radar screen....

Exhibit B:

Allyn, Schoen and Berland: Unethical Behavior to Benefit Fox

An Open Letter to Rob Allyn, Doug Schoen and Marcela Berland from the Publisher of Narco News:

To: Rob Allyn, Director, "Democracy Watch"
Allyn and Company
Dallas, Texas
roallyn@aol.com

Doug Schoen
Penn, Schoen and Berland
New York, New York
dschoen@ps-b.com

Marcela Berland
Penn, Schoen and Berland
Washington, DC
mberland@ps-b.com

June 25, 2000

Dear Sirs and Madam,

On this day when our 200,000th reader has joined the ranks of the better-informed public at The Narco News Bulletin, we have some very serious questions for you.

We first wrote to you on June 15th asking that you disclose what financial interests are behind your "Democracy Watch" project. In that letter we cited the Statement of Principles of the American Society of Daily Newspaper Editors as well as the Declaration of Principles of the Canadian Association of Daily Newspapers which declares that, "conflicts of interest, real or apparent, must be revealed."

On April 17th, we received a letter of response from Rob Allyn in Dallas in which he wrote:

Mr. Giordano:

I read with interest your email to me of last week. You make some very, very good points, and I am taking them up with our sponsors this week.

Can you and I possibly meet during our next trip to Mexico this coming Thursday? We will be coming down to release our first pre-election survey.

Perhaps by then, I will have answers to all of your questions. I will work this week to explore whether we might be permitted to release the names of our donors. In the meantime, I hope you will appreciate the dilemma of our contributors, who retained us to work for transparency in the elections process -- yet have a justifiable concern over negative repercussions for their support of a project which those in power will no doubt view as anti-government.

Let's talk directly as soon as we can. I firmly believe, having read your bulletins in the past, that you will see that we are on the side of the angels in this matter.

Rob Allyn

There, we have published it in full, without censorship, once again.

We replied to Rob stating that whether your project is "on the side of the angels" will be determined by your deeds more than your words, and that the sina qua non of a project that claims to support democracy and transparency on the Mexican election process is to be transparent yourselves.

Perhaps because we declined to put our own credibility at risk by agreeing to the private meeting that Rob requested, you chose not to respond to that last letter. Nor did you invite us to your press conference in Mexico City on June 22nd. So much for your commitment to openness and transparency. You wanted to fix our coverage in private, and once that could not be done, you tried to escape from our scrutiny.

However, The Narco News Bulletin, being a global project of authentic journalism with strong participation by our readers, has received copies of correspondence that Rob wrote in those days to one of our readers in New Zealand.

That's correct, New Zealand. There is no longer a corner of this earth upon which you can hide.

Apparently Rob thought the New Zealand correspondence might be from the press, and he tried to deceive that writer too.

Rob wrote:


We're planning the largest exit poll in the history of Mexico, with about 1,000 fieldworkers at 500 sample points, spread out throughout the country to balance urban and rural, geographic differences, etc. to produce a sample of at least 10,000 interviews (may go as high as 40K, depending on turnout).

Our fieldworkers will use a closed-box system where exiting voters mark a card to indicate how they voted and insert it into a closed box to guard their privacy, so they don't have to verbally discuss their vote with anyone.

This helps get a more honest and accurate picture and has been proven by prior experience in latin america and in other emerging democracies to greatly enhance the number of voters willing to participate.

Margin of error should be less than 1 to one and one-half percent on such a large and balanced sample size.

Our team has polled presidential elections for President Clinton in the US, served both the Democratic and Republican Parties in the US, as well as both the ruling PRI and the opposition PAN in Mexico. Our experts have worked in emerging democracies throughout Latin America, the middle East and Eastern Europe, including polling for heads of state of Ecuador, Venezuela, Costa Rica, Bolivia, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Greece, Israel and Turkey.

We've all done democracy work for our respective International Republican Instititue and National Democratic Institute, both of which will be on hand together with the Carter Center for Peace Studies as election observers.

Hope this addresses your questions. I'm curious to know, are you with the media or is this a matter of personal interest? Either way, we welcome your interest, and wish you best of luck in all you do.

Rob Allyn
Democracy Watch

In recent days, your project has triggered various reactions:

Widespread rejection by the Mexican public and press, including an editorial in El Universal, Mexico's most widely-read daily, which we have translated for the benefit of our readers.

Repudiation by the original group "Democracy Watch" in Canada and its harsh criticism of your decision to keep your financial sources secret.

Criticism of your project's covert and dishonest nature by Mexican presidential candidates Cárdenas (PRD), Labastida (PRI), Camacho (PCD) and Rincón Gallardo (PDS).

An interesting silence regarding your project's colonial nature by PAN candidate Vicente Fox, who, it has now been revealed, has illegally laundered foreign money through US banks into his campaign.

An announcement by the Federal Elections Institute (IFE) that you are required to disclose your funding sources, which you refused to do at your June 22nd press conference in Mexico City.

June 22nd Press Conference by Rob Allyn and Marcela Berland in Mexico City (photo: El Universal)


The Narco News Bulletin considers this matter so important that we now have an investigator on the ground in Dallas-Fort Worth, as well as collaboration by ace researchers in Washington, DC.

We respectfully submit to each of you, Rob, Doug and Marcela, the following questions:

1. What contact have any of you had recently with Fox campaign political consultant Dick Morris?

2. Please confirm or deny that it was precisely Dick Morris who brought the firm of Penn, Shoen and Berland into the White House polling operations in 1996.

3. A question for Rob Allyn: have you had any contact recently with Texas businessman Sam Wyly, the Bush campaign contributor who paid for the attack ads against Arizona Senator John McCain in the New York GOP primary?

4. You don't deny having produced those ads for Mr. Wyly, do you?

5. Has Mr. Wyly shared with you just how much his electricity business will profit if Mexican candidate Vicente Fox wins the election and succeeds in privatizing the Mexican electric industry?

6. Is Mr. Wyly, a US citizen, one of the covert funders of "Democracy Watch"?

7. In recent days many documents have come to public light that demonstrate a wide international network of money-laundering by the Fox campaign. Among the US and Mexican businesses implicated in this scheme are: Fox Brothers, Citibank, and The Bank of the West in El Paso, Texas.

Also, on June 19th, the US Department of Treasury informed that Juan Pablo and Cristóbal Fox -- brothers of the candidate Fox -- "conducted between August 1997 and May of this year, financial transfers that could be related to banking crimes in Mexico, of $1,958,963.62 US dollars."

The US Treasury Department also wrote that "it is not discounted that (these money transfers) are connected to political fundraising." Are any of these interests funding your "Democracy Watch" project?

8. US officials revealed, according to La Jornada on June 24, 2000, that US authorities "sent to the (Mexican) Secretary of Treasury information related to the investigations that US agencies are conducting regarding the financial transfers that the brothers Juan Pablo and Cristóbal Fox conducted, without this meaning that the investigations have already terminated, as it is already estimated that the triangulations of money could reach near to $30 million US dollars."

Are any of the companies of the Fox brothers -- including Consultoría Internacional Casa de Cambio, Vegetales Frescos or Congelados Don José -- among of the funders of your project?

9. Are any officials of banks or financial institutions that benefited from the $80 billion FOBAPROA bank bailout among the funders of your project?

10. Are any of your funders also contributors to "Amigos de Fox," the National Action Party (PAN) or other parties or groups supporting the Fox campaign?

11. Are you prepared to turn over to Narco News the complete methodology of your recent poll that declares Vicente Fox the winner of the July 2 elections?

12. What steps have you taken in your project to assure that none of these secret donors are connected with drug money laundering, the FOBAPROA scandal or the Fox campaign?

Vale, there are a dozen questions that if you truly believe in transparency in the election process you will answer truthfully and with the supporting documentation.

We understand that to answer these questions honestly, you must reveal the full list of funders of your project. Furthermore, to be believed after you have so fracased your public relations in Mexico, you must have that information certified by a public accounting firm that has access to all contracts and bank records.

You have already been called upon to reveal this information to the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) in Mexico and until you do so you are acting outside the law as international electoral delinquents.

This behavior on your part is quite far from what Rob Allyn cynically calls "democracy work."

In years past, US political consultants could work abroad with little or no scrutiny among the English-language press. We serve notice that this old practice is hereby defeated, and that your continued actions in violation of both Mexican law and the ethical standards declared by the American Association of Public Opinion Research and of every major journalistic association, will be subject to continued investigation and scrutiny throughout Mexico, the United States, and the world.

May the Aztec sun continue to disinfect the dirty practices of US political consultants in Mexico.

Sincerely,

Al Giordano

Publisher, The Narco News Bulletin

narconews@hotmail.com

 

There's no hidin' place 'round here