I've got an itch, Kossacks. I want you to help me scratch it. I think Hank Paulson is part of the same cabal that has been behind all the evil of the past eight years, and ceding him unreviewable authority to dispense $700 billion in taxpayer funds will result in more evil still.
Hank Paulson grew up in Barrington Hills, a swank suburb of Chicago.
According to Wikipedia, Hank Paulson's first job out of Harvard Business School was "Staff Assistant to the Assistant Secretary of Defense at The Pentagon from 1970 to 1972".
He then became "assistant to John Ehrlichman from 1972 to 1973" running the Plumbers that did illegal eavesdropping, wiretapping, blackmailing and revenge for the Nixon White House.
With early skills like that is it any wonder he scaled the greasy pole at Goldman Sachs to become CEO and Chairman?
I want help filling out those Nixon years. I think if we get names in the frame it will answer a lot of questions about what Hank Paulson is up to now with our tax dollars.
Questions below the fold! Let's get to work!
- Did Hank Paulson work on either a congressional campaign in 1968 or 1970 and was Donald Rumsfeld his Congressman? Bear in mind that 1968 saw the assassination of Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy and then riots at the Democratic National Convention as a set up to the narrow, sub-majority Nixon victory in November.
- Did Hank Paulson work with or know Bob Ellsworth, Nixon's political director and a fixer of dirty tricks?
- Was Paulson in Chicago in August 1968 and nearby the Democratic Convention with all the orchestrated violence that Rumsfeld and Ellsworth coordinated for Nixon? (Rumsfeld had a hotel room overlooking the riots and phoned a "blow by blow" of the bloody police beatings to Ellsworth and Nixon live from his window.)
- Who did Paulson work for at the Pentagon and in which division? The fact that Wikipedia is silent on which Assistant Secretary of Defense he served (there are several) leads me to think it was one of the murkier and darker corners of the Pentagon doing Nixonian crimes of the day. We could learn a lot from putting a name to his boss and looking at the record.
- How involved was Paulson in coordinating Ehrlichman's "Plumbers"? How nearly was he implicated in their dark crimes?
- Finally, I know some of you won't like this, but I'd like to know if the young Hank Paulson and the young Hillary Rodham knew one another back in the day. They grew up near each other and both went to Washington. Hillary was an observer of the 1968 Chicago violence. It's not unreasonable to ask if they've known each other going so far back.
A search of the Nixon Presidential Library online archive only comes up with three hits, all from when Hank Paulson was working for Ehrlichman in the White House.
I know there is more out there. Help me find it. I have a hunch it could fill in some important blanks as to what is in store as the financial collapse plays out.