Special Report. The "Grand Old Pedophile" party returns to power in DC
Nebraska's new GOP Senator, Ben Sasse, was a proctor and tutor for the House of Representatives pages who helped cover up a sex scandal involving Representatives Mark Foley (R-FL) and Jim Kolbe (R-AZ) in the late 1990s. Sasse will now represent in the Senate a state with a long history of promoting pedophilia and child prostitution involving top Republicans. In the 1980s, Nebraska and its iconic Boy's Town orphanage were "ground zeros" in the infamous Franklin Credit Union scandal involving rising GOP African-American star Lawrence King.
King was later convicted for embezzling funds from the minority-owned Franklin Credit Union, but thanks to pressure from the Reagan and Bush 41 administrations, there were never any prosecutions for child molestation and trafficking across state lines. Several witnesses came forward to accuse King of running a virtual underage teen prostitution service for top GOP officials in Omaha and Washington, DC.
From 1996 to 1998, Sasse was a tutor and proctor for the U.S. House of Representatives page program, which experienced its own pederasty scandal. Prior to that stint, Sasse worked for the Boston Consulting Group, Mitt Romney's and Binyamin Netanyahu's old firm.
ne of the members of the House Page Board while Sasse served as a tutor and proctor was Representative Jim Kolbe (R-AZ), who once served as a page in the Senate. Sasse had the responsibility to protect the underage teen House pages from among other threats, predatory members of Congress.
The chair of the House Page Board in 1998, Sasse's final year as proctor/tutor, was Representative Tillie Fowler (R-FL). Fowler died suddenly from a brain hemorrhage on March 2, 2005, after allegations about the sexual abuse of pages first hit the front pages.
In 1996, while Sasse was a proctor and tutor for the pages, Kolbe, a member of the oversight House Page Board, took two 17-year old male pages on a three-day Independence Day camping trip to the Grand Canyon in Arizona. Kolbe also said he was aware of ex-GOP Rep. Mark Foley's (R-FL) e-mails to underage male pages as early as 2000. However, Foley's indiscretions with the pages reportedly began as early as 1998, while Sasse was still a proctor/tutor. Foley later resigned after it was publicly revealed that he had made sexual advances toward male pages, including attempts to coax them from their dormitory on Capitol Hill.
Kolbe later stepped down as chairman of the House Page Board after questions were raised about his camping trip with the pages. Sasse, as a proctor and tutor for the pages, had the responsibility of stopping Kolbe from taking the pages out of state for possible illegal purposes. Sasse's closeness to the House Page Sex Scandal begs the fabled Washington scandal question: "What did Sasse know and when did he know it?" If Sasse was unaware of the activities of Kolbe and Foley with House pages between 1996 and 1998, why did he not know? As a proctor and tutor, it was his job to know. If Sasse was aware of the activities of Kolbe and Foley and chose not to report it to the House leadership, that makes Sasse an accessory to criminal behavior.
As a result of repeated sex scandals involving House pages, the House of Representatives in 2011 announced the House Page Program would be abolished due officially to "cost" issues. However, Senator Sasse will continue to enjoy the presence of pages in the Senate, which opted to continue the program.
Michael Centanni [right], a major GOP fundraiser recently arrested by DC police for possession of child pornography, seen with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (left].
Sasse also served as chief of staff for Representative Jeff Fortenberry (R-NE) at the same time that another rising GOP staffer, Ryan Loskarn, was honing his political skills under Representatives Wally Herger (R-CA) and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN). Loskarn then moved to the Senate where he served as the chief of staff for Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN), who was just re-elected in the Republican electoral sweep. Earlier this year, Loskarn allegedly committed suicide in his parents' Maryland home after he had earlier been arrested for possession and distribution of child pornography. The arrest appeared to have been a part of an international investigation of child pornography launched by the Toronto police as part of Operation Spade. Several politicians in Canada, the United States, and Europe were caught up in the arrest of the proprietors of Azov Films of Toronto and Stafford, Virginia, which is close to Washington, DC and was a leading distributor of child pornography images and videos.
The arrest of Loskarn also focused attention on Alexander's for-profit Bright Horizons Family Solutions, Inc., a child welfare and emergency care services firm that resulted from a corporate merger in 1986 of Bright Horizons, founded by an employee of Mitt Romney's old firm, Bain Capital of Boston, and Corporate Family Solutions (CFS), Inc, co-founded in 1987 by Bob Keeshan (Captain Kangaroo) and Alexander. Bright Horizons operates 750 child development centers for 850 corporate clients in 40 states, as well as Europe and India. Bright Horizons' founder was also involved in charitable assistance for homeless children and child refugees on the Thai-Cambodian border and Sudan. Orphanages on the Thai-Cambodian border are nexuses for pedophiles, as previously reported by WMR in our exposé of U.S. diplomat pedophiles in Southeast Asia.
Base Connect may have been connecting to a lot more than deep-pocketed GOP donors. Its executive, Michael Centanni, appears to be part of a major pedophile ring operating within Republican congressional ranks and the Republican Party.
The return of GOP pedophiles and their enablers to positions of influence in the Senate was heralded by the October 31 arrest by Washington, DC police of Michael Centanni, a top GOP conservative fund raiser. Centanni, like Loskarn, was arrested after an investigation of Gnutella "peer-to-peer" file sharing by child porn customers of Azov Films by agents of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Homeland Security Department. Centanni is a major figure in the annual Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) conference in Washington and was a partner at the GOP political fundraising company Base Connect, which occupies an office next to the upscale Madison Hotel in downtown Washington. Police discovered a hidden camera in the bathroom of Centanni's home which was pointed at the shower.
CPAC 2010 featuring moderator Michael Centanni
Base Connect, formerly BMW Connect, suspended Centanni but it is not the first time the company has been involved in scandal. Although it has raised millions of dollars for Republican candidates, it has also been accused of fleecing its GOP clients by grabbing large portions of campaign donations as its "fees." Many critics call the usurious fees "kickbacks." One of those who charges the firm with malfeasance was Dr. Ada Fisher, a Jewish African-American Republican House candidate who tried to unseat Representative Mel Watt (D-NC) in 2006. Fisher said she received only 7 percent of the money BMW, now Base Connect, received in her name. The firm was accused of also fleecing African-American House candidate Deborah Honeycutt in her 2006 campaign against Representative David Scott (D-GA) and Republican Representative Joseph Cao (R-LA) in his 2010 campaign.
Base Connect is also linked to the Freedom's Defense Fund Political Action Committee, which is based in Arlington, Virginia, the same city that hosts the "Fellowship," the group of wealthy corporate Republicans whose leader, Doug Coe, has been known to excuse pedophiles as long as they "accept Jesus." Freedom's Defense, in turn, is linked to prominent Islamophobes, including Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller.
Centanni's arrest followed by a few weeks the arrest by Washington, DC police of Rabbi Barry Freundel for allegedly installing hidden cameras in the women's "mikvah", or ritual bath, at the Orthodox Jewish Temple Kesher Israel in Washington, DC. It is not known whether the arrest of Freundel, who counted former Senator Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) among his congregants, was, in any way, connected with the arrests of Centanni and Loskarn. However, mikvahs are not only used by adults to bathe but also by children.
However, after Loskarn's arrest and "suicide," The Washington Post's Ruth Marcus urged "compassion" for individuals like Loskarn. In a February 6, 2014, editorial, Marcus wrote, "We should use this sad episode to call attention to the need for mental health services — although Loskarn’s problem was not lack of access but lack of willingness to accept the help available . . . But we should also use the moment to remind ourselves that reality is more complex than our cursory assumptions acknowledge, and that before we rush to condemn we might pause to consider the possibility of compassion." Marcus, who is Jewish, may have been setting the stage for more arrests of Washington's "high-and-mighty" later caught up in the Operation SPADE investigation. The mother and business partner of Azov Film's arrested proprietor, Brian Way, Sandra Waslov, who is reportedly Jewish, remains at large.
Freundel claims to have coined the Republican Party's phrase "family values," as well as authoring the Pentagon's now-discarded "don't ask, don't tell" policy on homosexuals in uniform. Freundel was especially fond of asking converts to Judaism to take a "practice" bath in his synagogue's mikvah.
Rabbi Barry Freundel was freed after his arrest without having to post bond.
The news of Centanni's arrest came a few days before the arrest of Molly Shattuck, the estranged wife of Exelon chairman Mayo Shattuck III. Mrs. Shattuck, noted for being the oldest Baltimore Ravens' cheerleader, was arrested after a 15-year old male alleged that she raped him at a Bethany Beach, Delaware rental home over the Labor Day weekend.
Mayo Shattuck was the president and chief operating officer of Alex, Brown & Sons under the chairmanship of Baltimore-native A. B. "Buzzy" Krongard. who would be appointed executive director of the Central Intelligence Agency in March 2001. Krongard was later accused of profiting on the 9/11 attack by placing "put options" on American and United Airlines stock, as well as on other companies adversely affected by the terrorist attack. Shattuck was the President and CEO of Constellation Energy and shepherded the firm's acquisition by Exelon.
Former Ravens cheerleader Molly Shattuck, estanged wife of CIA-connected businessman, charged with raping a 15-year old boy.
Mayo and Molly Shattuck were friends with Carter Beese, Jr., a former commissioner of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and director of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation under George H. W. Bush. From 1994 to 1997, Beese was chairman of Alex, Brown, a company close to three generations of the Bush political dynasty. Beese also served as vice chairman of the CIA-connected Bankers Trust and president of Riggs Capital Partners, a division of Riggs Bank. Beese was appointed by George W. Bush to the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee. Beese, a resident of Owings Mills, Maryland, a Baltimore suburb, was found hanging in a bungalow on the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu in April 2007. Police ruled Beese's death a "suicide."
The President of Riggs Investment from 1997 to the sale of Riggs Bank to PNC in 2005 was Jonathan Bush, brother of George H. W. Bush and uncle of George W. Bush. Jonathan Bush provided "services" for a number of embassies in Washington, DC and he assumed control of Riggs during its acquisition by PNC after Riggs was accused of laundering money for such CIA clients as the Saudi royal family, President Teodoro Obiang of Equatorial Guinea, and former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.
The recent arrest of Centanni indicates that the final chapter on Operation Spade, Azov Films, and GOP pedophilia has yet to be written.
Nebraska's new GOP Senator, Ben Sasse, was a proctor and tutor for the House of Representatives pages who helped cover up a sex scandal involving Representatives Mark Foley (R-FL) and Jim Kolbe (R-AZ) in the late 1990s. Sasse will now represent in the Senate a state with a long history of promoting pedophilia and child prostitution involving top Republicans. In the 1980s, Nebraska and its iconic Boy's Town orphanage were "ground zeros" in the infamous Franklin Credit Union scandal involving rising GOP African-American star Lawrence King.
King was later convicted for embezzling funds from the minority-owned Franklin Credit Union, but thanks to pressure from the Reagan and Bush 41 administrations, there were never any prosecutions for child molestation and trafficking across state lines. Several witnesses came forward to accuse King of running a virtual underage teen prostitution service for top GOP officials in Omaha and Washington, DC.
From 1996 to 1998, Sasse was a tutor and proctor for the U.S. House of Representatives page program, which experienced its own pederasty scandal. Prior to that stint, Sasse worked for the Boston Consulting Group, Mitt Romney's and Binyamin Netanyahu's old firm.
ne of the members of the House Page Board while Sasse served as a tutor and proctor was Representative Jim Kolbe (R-AZ), who once served as a page in the Senate. Sasse had the responsibility to protect the underage teen House pages from among other threats, predatory members of Congress.
The chair of the House Page Board in 1998, Sasse's final year as proctor/tutor, was Representative Tillie Fowler (R-FL). Fowler died suddenly from a brain hemorrhage on March 2, 2005, after allegations about the sexual abuse of pages first hit the front pages.
In 1996, while Sasse was a proctor and tutor for the pages, Kolbe, a member of the oversight House Page Board, took two 17-year old male pages on a three-day Independence Day camping trip to the Grand Canyon in Arizona. Kolbe also said he was aware of ex-GOP Rep. Mark Foley's (R-FL) e-mails to underage male pages as early as 2000. However, Foley's indiscretions with the pages reportedly began as early as 1998, while Sasse was still a proctor/tutor. Foley later resigned after it was publicly revealed that he had made sexual advances toward male pages, including attempts to coax them from their dormitory on Capitol Hill.
Kolbe later stepped down as chairman of the House Page Board after questions were raised about his camping trip with the pages. Sasse, as a proctor and tutor for the pages, had the responsibility of stopping Kolbe from taking the pages out of state for possible illegal purposes. Sasse's closeness to the House Page Sex Scandal begs the fabled Washington scandal question: "What did Sasse know and when did he know it?" If Sasse was unaware of the activities of Kolbe and Foley with House pages between 1996 and 1998, why did he not know? As a proctor and tutor, it was his job to know. If Sasse was aware of the activities of Kolbe and Foley and chose not to report it to the House leadership, that makes Sasse an accessory to criminal behavior.
As a result of repeated sex scandals involving House pages, the House of Representatives in 2011 announced the House Page Program would be abolished due officially to "cost" issues. However, Senator Sasse will continue to enjoy the presence of pages in the Senate, which opted to continue the program.
Michael Centanni [right], a major GOP fundraiser recently arrested by DC police for possession of child pornography, seen with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (left].
Sasse also served as chief of staff for Representative Jeff Fortenberry (R-NE) at the same time that another rising GOP staffer, Ryan Loskarn, was honing his political skills under Representatives Wally Herger (R-CA) and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN). Loskarn then moved to the Senate where he served as the chief of staff for Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN), who was just re-elected in the Republican electoral sweep. Earlier this year, Loskarn allegedly committed suicide in his parents' Maryland home after he had earlier been arrested for possession and distribution of child pornography. The arrest appeared to have been a part of an international investigation of child pornography launched by the Toronto police as part of Operation Spade. Several politicians in Canada, the United States, and Europe were caught up in the arrest of the proprietors of Azov Films of Toronto and Stafford, Virginia, which is close to Washington, DC and was a leading distributor of child pornography images and videos.
The arrest of Loskarn also focused attention on Alexander's for-profit Bright Horizons Family Solutions, Inc., a child welfare and emergency care services firm that resulted from a corporate merger in 1986 of Bright Horizons, founded by an employee of Mitt Romney's old firm, Bain Capital of Boston, and Corporate Family Solutions (CFS), Inc, co-founded in 1987 by Bob Keeshan (Captain Kangaroo) and Alexander. Bright Horizons operates 750 child development centers for 850 corporate clients in 40 states, as well as Europe and India. Bright Horizons' founder was also involved in charitable assistance for homeless children and child refugees on the Thai-Cambodian border and Sudan. Orphanages on the Thai-Cambodian border are nexuses for pedophiles, as previously reported by WMR in our exposé of U.S. diplomat pedophiles in Southeast Asia.
Base Connect may have been connecting to a lot more than deep-pocketed GOP donors. Its executive, Michael Centanni, appears to be part of a major pedophile ring operating within Republican congressional ranks and the Republican Party.
The return of GOP pedophiles and their enablers to positions of influence in the Senate was heralded by the October 31 arrest by Washington, DC police of Michael Centanni, a top GOP conservative fund raiser. Centanni, like Loskarn, was arrested after an investigation of Gnutella "peer-to-peer" file sharing by child porn customers of Azov Films by agents of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Homeland Security Department. Centanni is a major figure in the annual Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) conference in Washington and was a partner at the GOP political fundraising company Base Connect, which occupies an office next to the upscale Madison Hotel in downtown Washington. Police discovered a hidden camera in the bathroom of Centanni's home which was pointed at the shower.
CPAC 2010 featuring moderator Michael Centanni
Base Connect, formerly BMW Connect, suspended Centanni but it is not the first time the company has been involved in scandal. Although it has raised millions of dollars for Republican candidates, it has also been accused of fleecing its GOP clients by grabbing large portions of campaign donations as its "fees." Many critics call the usurious fees "kickbacks." One of those who charges the firm with malfeasance was Dr. Ada Fisher, a Jewish African-American Republican House candidate who tried to unseat Representative Mel Watt (D-NC) in 2006. Fisher said she received only 7 percent of the money BMW, now Base Connect, received in her name. The firm was accused of also fleecing African-American House candidate Deborah Honeycutt in her 2006 campaign against Representative David Scott (D-GA) and Republican Representative Joseph Cao (R-LA) in his 2010 campaign.
Base Connect is also linked to the Freedom's Defense Fund Political Action Committee, which is based in Arlington, Virginia, the same city that hosts the "Fellowship," the group of wealthy corporate Republicans whose leader, Doug Coe, has been known to excuse pedophiles as long as they "accept Jesus." Freedom's Defense, in turn, is linked to prominent Islamophobes, including Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller.
Centanni's arrest followed by a few weeks the arrest by Washington, DC police of Rabbi Barry Freundel for allegedly installing hidden cameras in the women's "mikvah", or ritual bath, at the Orthodox Jewish Temple Kesher Israel in Washington, DC. It is not known whether the arrest of Freundel, who counted former Senator Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) among his congregants, was, in any way, connected with the arrests of Centanni and Loskarn. However, mikvahs are not only used by adults to bathe but also by children.
However, after Loskarn's arrest and "suicide," The Washington Post's Ruth Marcus urged "compassion" for individuals like Loskarn. In a February 6, 2014, editorial, Marcus wrote, "We should use this sad episode to call attention to the need for mental health services — although Loskarn’s problem was not lack of access but lack of willingness to accept the help available . . . But we should also use the moment to remind ourselves that reality is more complex than our cursory assumptions acknowledge, and that before we rush to condemn we might pause to consider the possibility of compassion." Marcus, who is Jewish, may have been setting the stage for more arrests of Washington's "high-and-mighty" later caught up in the Operation SPADE investigation. The mother and business partner of Azov Film's arrested proprietor, Brian Way, Sandra Waslov, who is reportedly Jewish, remains at large.
Freundel claims to have coined the Republican Party's phrase "family values," as well as authoring the Pentagon's now-discarded "don't ask, don't tell" policy on homosexuals in uniform. Freundel was especially fond of asking converts to Judaism to take a "practice" bath in his synagogue's mikvah.
Rabbi Barry Freundel was freed after his arrest without having to post bond.
The news of Centanni's arrest came a few days before the arrest of Molly Shattuck, the estranged wife of Exelon chairman Mayo Shattuck III. Mrs. Shattuck, noted for being the oldest Baltimore Ravens' cheerleader, was arrested after a 15-year old male alleged that she raped him at a Bethany Beach, Delaware rental home over the Labor Day weekend.
Mayo Shattuck was the president and chief operating officer of Alex, Brown & Sons under the chairmanship of Baltimore-native A. B. "Buzzy" Krongard. who would be appointed executive director of the Central Intelligence Agency in March 2001. Krongard was later accused of profiting on the 9/11 attack by placing "put options" on American and United Airlines stock, as well as on other companies adversely affected by the terrorist attack. Shattuck was the President and CEO of Constellation Energy and shepherded the firm's acquisition by Exelon.
Former Ravens cheerleader Molly Shattuck, estanged wife of CIA-connected businessman, charged with raping a 15-year old boy.
Mayo and Molly Shattuck were friends with Carter Beese, Jr., a former commissioner of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and director of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation under George H. W. Bush. From 1994 to 1997, Beese was chairman of Alex, Brown, a company close to three generations of the Bush political dynasty. Beese also served as vice chairman of the CIA-connected Bankers Trust and president of Riggs Capital Partners, a division of Riggs Bank. Beese was appointed by George W. Bush to the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee. Beese, a resident of Owings Mills, Maryland, a Baltimore suburb, was found hanging in a bungalow on the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu in April 2007. Police ruled Beese's death a "suicide."
The President of Riggs Investment from 1997 to the sale of Riggs Bank to PNC in 2005 was Jonathan Bush, brother of George H. W. Bush and uncle of George W. Bush. Jonathan Bush provided "services" for a number of embassies in Washington, DC and he assumed control of Riggs during its acquisition by PNC after Riggs was accused of laundering money for such CIA clients as the Saudi royal family, President Teodoro Obiang of Equatorial Guinea, and former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.
The recent arrest of Centanni indicates that the final chapter on Operation Spade, Azov Films, and GOP pedophilia has yet to be written.
