http://onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/120104Madsen/120104madsen.htmlVotergate: More details emerge
by Wayne Madsen
Excerpts:
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"Since the late 1980s, Five Star Trust has been supplemented by additional money from the Saudis. According to Houston sources, the trust has been extensively used by the campaigns of both George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush. These sources also claim that the Saudis and Bushes use "Five Star" entities as vehicles to move large amounts of money for special purposes. Other names associated with this large Saudi-Bush multibillion dollar tranche are Five Star Group, Five Star Company, and Five Star LLC. The money used to move the money for the vote rigging was also said to involve accounts in Phoenix, Arizona and Houston.
The use of foreign nationals as election machine technicians on Election Day has also been confirmed. Sources with details of the vote rigging stated that some foreign nationals were involved in the reprogramming of Diebold and other machines in the four key states of Florida, Ohio, Texas, and California. The technicians successfully padded votes in Ohio to ensure that state's 20 electoral votes went to the Bush column. In populous counties in Florida, Texas, and California, the vote padding ensured that Bush's nationwide popular vote margin was well in excess of 3 million votes, giving him 51 percent of the national vote over John Kerry. One unsuccessful Democratic candidate in California voiced concerns about whether the alleged vote padding in his state affected his own vote count.
Vote padding for Bush's popular vote may have also been used in Maryland. Diebold ran a training program for volunteer election technicians on October 29, three days before Election Day, at a warehouse in Glen Burnie, Maryland. Volunteers were paid $14 an hour for their services. According to a Diebold insider, U.S. citizenship was not a qualification to work on Diebold election machines on Election Day and the volunteers could have been assigned "anywhere in the state
on Election Day."
Sources familiar with the Votergate scandal have stated that foreign nationals from Mexico, Brazil, and Russia were used to "fix" selected machines in critical counties and precincts in Florida, Ohio, Texas, and California. Moreover, some of these individuals have been associated with organized crime activity, including computer hacking, in the United States and abroad. Those familiar with the use of Diebold machines to commit voter fraud have revealed that the hardware and software used in Diebold machines used in casinos and polling places is essentially the same, including the back door used to dial in over telephone lines to change payoff odds in gambling machines. The same mechanism was used to change votes, the sources contend."
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Thanks to members of the Democratic Underground for sending me news items, leads, contacts, and other relevant information.
Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist, author, and columnist. He is the author of the forthcoming book, "Jaded Tasks: Big Oil, Black Ops & Brass Plates" and wrote "Genocide & Covert Operations in Africa: 1993-1999" (Mellen Press)."