ROMNEY, OWENS AND THE HIDDEN MORMON POLITICS

www.barrychamish.com

                                                  ROMNEY, OWENS AND THE HIDDEN MORMON POLITICS
                                                                                   by Barry Chamish

      On the morning of Dec. 18, 2002, former congressman Wayne Owens arrived in Tel Aviv and was murdered by the evening. Those who know my research will not be shocked when I reveal the order to kill came from Israel's current President, Shimon Peres. I conducted extensive research which was published in my book Shabtai Tzvi, Labor Zionism And The Holocaust. Fortunate readers, I offer you the e-book. Go to Chapter Three for the whole gruesome story:  http://vho.org/aaargh/fran/livres8/CHAMISCHsabatai.pdf
      I was blessed with an informant within established Mormon society. Eventually, I arrived in Salt Lake City and presented quite a lecture at a college on the nearly parallel murders of Wayne Owens and Yitzhak Rabin. Write me for a copy of the DVD:   chamish@netvision.net.il
      My highly reliable and proven informant returned this week with brand new information on the Owens murder:

Barry,
Here is a tidbit regarding Wayne Owens from a neighbor/friend (lives at end of cul-de-sac from my corner house).  This provides more detail to what he told me 3-4 years ago.  He was friends with the chief-of-staff (a lawyer) and his wife.  In an LDS context, this would make Owens much more blackmailable than mere dalliance with prostitutes, etc. Wayne Owen's chief of staff's, Kensley Brunsdale, Ex-Wife told me he had a homosexual affair with Wayne.  He was the person that ran against Jim Hansen about 20 years ago as a dem. and came close to defeating Jim. 

      Knowing that my source is just like me, uncover the cover-ups and reveal the truth for our peoples' sake, he dove into Mormon politics:

More on Sen. Hatch's voting/confirmation record.
He's even worse than I had remembered.  Two months ago I was at a Bountiful Town Hall meeting where Sen. Hatch said 3 different times that he had not voted for the Dept. of Education in 1979, when he actually did vote for it.  Playing to his audience, or what? When they jump in the DC Sewer with the rest of the Rats they can't help but become slimy.

     But believe me when I say, I know enough about Mitch Romney's father George, the governor of Michigan, through a fantastic yet believable expose called The TransFormation Of America by Cathy O'Brien. If you believe this account, and I do, back in the '60s, Governor Romney was running a sex blackmail clinic on Mackinac Island, Michigan. I have no illusions that this presidential race is between good and improved, or bad and better. It's between two bads and you'd have to be completely deluded to vote for either one.
     So, I return to the Wayne Owens murder and what I was just informed. Way back in Dec. 2002, my informant verified my conclusion. Wayne Owens did not die on a path beside the Tel Aviv Hilton. My informant gathered testimony from with Owens' close circle that he was murdered elsewhere and his body was moved. In the latest round of information, he adds: "Another tidbit from my original conversation w/my FS nephew...Among the few things he did say about what he described as a privileged or secret meeting that he was under oath not to talk about, was that Wayne Owens' family had expressed that they didn't want an autopsy performed.  I thought that was odd at the time and even fantasied that maybe they had been visited and told not to have one done.  But mere fantasy, I realize. I would think that  after hearing what you had to say, they might want to reconsider that decision, even with the passage of time, if originally they thought it unnecessary and were not being coerced."

      My conclusion is that the much younger Brunsdale did not desire an affair with a none too handsome, 65 year old at death, Wayne Owens. It was an ordinary affair career-boosting Mormon fling. My informant notes: ...was and is very much  impressed w/Kennley's ex-wife.  Which could be some indication Kennley was prepossessing, himself; maybe even to the point of being a pretty boy, or handsome devil at least.

      I will summarize, in a nutshell, why Wayne Owens was knocked off. In 1989, Owens flew to Tunisia and met with PLO-chieftain Yasir Arafat. This was illegal and it caused a significant scandal in the US. This did not go unnoticed by in 1990 by PM Shimon Peres, who cooked up a plan in which Owens will be supplied funds to start his own peace lobby called, The Center For Middle East Peace And Economic Cooperation. Wayne Owens, a member of the Council On Foreign Relations (CFR) was assisted in the founding by co-founder Daniel Abraham and business founder Stephen P. Cohen (CFR).
      Shortly after, Peres founded his own Center for Peace, with co-founders Daniel Abraham and Stephen Cohen of the CFR. The scam was in place. Owens would milk USAID of hundreds of millions in AID grants on behalf of his peace center, while Peres would be given responsibility to spend the American taxpayer "donations" on behalf of hispeace center. It was the best scam in both worlds. In 2000, the minds of Brunsley and Peres melded in crime. Brunsley was an environmentalist, he convinced himself, deluding himself that letting the decrepit Owens do whatever he wanted with his body was justified in his water projects bringing peace to the Middle East. In that year, Peres Peace Center executive, Charles Bronfman (CFR), bought a water company, Vivendi, which, shortly after, just happened to win a big chunk of a desalination plant contract in Ashkelon and its connecting canal to Gaza, worth $128m to Peres and $75m to Arafat, all paid for by USAID.
      But then tragedy struck the criminal enterprise. USAID chief auditor, Lawrence Foley, based in Amman, Jordan, looked at the numbers behind the Owens/Peres desalination project, and they didn't add up. So on Oct. 28/02, he was murdered in Amman. The crime has never been solved. The murderama had begun.
      Then came a far worse leak. Peres' envoy to the PLO was a convicted crook named Yossi Ginnosar. He and accountant Ozra Lev had cooked a scheme for Arafat to embezzle over $300m from what he called "the Palestinian people", and hide it in Swiss bank accounts. But Lev snapped, shockingly realizing that he had facilitated terrorism against his people...or, the Jews. He revealed that numerous phoney businesses had been established claiming that Stephen Cohen, the business founder of Owens crooked peace center, not to mention a founder of the Peres Peace Center, as their owner.
      Apparently, not realizing that Peres can ride out any scandal, Owens naturally thought that he'd been directly connected to the huge scandal via Cohen. So, on Dec. 17, '02, Owens had a meeting in Cairo with two "honest" PLO politicians, Jerusalem Affairs Minister Sari Nusseibeh, and Finance Minister, Salaam Fayyad, to overthrow Arafat's leadership of the PLO and ultimately, to put an end to the Arafat/Peres scam to bilk the American government of, literally, billions of dollars, in environmentally tasteful water-related projects.
      However, needless to say, Owens was dead in Israel the next day, Nusseibeh, was stripped by Arafat of his Jerusalem Ministry the day after, and it took two more months for Arafat to rid himself of Fayyad.
      Since visiting Salt Lake City and telling the Owens facts, I have been corresponding with a member of Wayne Owens family, who must know, I've got the murder sorted out. But, lest he may be construed as casting aspersions on the good and decent Mormon folk, he has kept his mouth shut...whatever he actually knows.  We're all the same suckers, Mormon, PLO, American taxpayer and Jew. Who'll be the first to talk...honestly?

end

     Listen to my talk on this topic at  www.radioliberty.com  Press play online.

     My manuscript 1971, continues to sell trickle by trickle. We're at 40 now. I've cleverly made certain it will be a great investment, and so far, readers have agreed. Here's a recent response. Don't try to understand it, just that he personally related to 1971.

Re 1971, About 3/4ths the way though, "been there and done some of that" and so I can relate very well.
Speaking of the hotel prank, I was once helping a friend move his residence from a second-floor apartment, upon which same floor a crazy lady lived. Crazy on moving day was standing on the street level, back against the building, screen door pulled against her and monitoring our every move as we carried furniture and et-cetera down stairs, out the door thus past her, round the corner to the moving truck. then wed reverse course to go back upstairs for another round.
On one round we deposited the furniture in the truck, then went to the back of the building and scaled a large iron drain pipe up to, across to and in his apartment window. DAVE

     This manuscript was a risk. Much has changed since 1971 in attitudes, in bigotry, in understanding. I was afraid you'd abandon me. But by reactions, so far, you've loved this manuscript. It takes me a lot of effort for each ms. They are signed, enumerated and assured to be one of only 100 first edition copies. Get this wise investment AND help me to keep writing. It's $100. no matter in how long.

Contributions at Paypal:  chamishba@gmail.com

or by writing:

Barry Chamish
POB 840157
Saint Augustine, FL  32080

   And your contribution will be rewarded with a heartfelt DVD gift from me: THE whole Salt Lake City DVD.

   Good news. My website is updated now by Tom  Mack.

Hear my radio show:     

http://www.libertyarchives.com/

Look at my books. Start with:
Bye Bye Gaza
http://www.lulu.com/content/575116

'Operation Free Assange'

'Operation Free Assange': Anonymous take down UK's Justice Ministry's website

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Published: 20 August, 2012, 23:20

AFP Photo / Joel Saget

http://rt.com/news/anonymous-uk-justice-site-down-157/

TRENDS:The Assange Files

TAGS: UK, Protest, Politics, Internet, Assange,Anonymous

The website for the UK Ministry of Justice is under attack after hacktivists engaged a mission to try and take down justice.gov.uk in retaliation for Britain’s handling of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Several Twitter accounts associated with the loose-knit Anonymous collective have acknowledged that the UK Ministry of Justice’s website is being targeted with a distributed denial-of-service, or DDoS, attack. The assault on the website is being carried out under a campaign branded #OpFreeAssange.

“#OpFreeAssange: TANGO DOWN! http://www.justice.gov.uk/ [500 Internal Server Error] [#Anonymous #WikiLeaks],” reads one tweet sent from the @Anon_Central Twitter account.

The hackers also claim to have taken down the website of another British government department, the Department of Work and Pensions. “Gov. of UK Expect Us!” read a tweet by Anonymous.

Assange, the founder and editor of whistleblower website WikiLeaks, has been ordered by Swedish authorities to be extradited from the UK where he had been under house arrest. Two women from Sweden have accused Assange of sex crimes, although he has yet to be charged.

In fear of being sent to Sweden and then extradited to the US to be tried for his role with WikiLeaks, Assange applied for political asylum in Ecuador, which the Latin American country finally granted him last week after two months of waiting. Regardless, British authorities have refused to give Assange safe passage out of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London so that he may travel overseas.

Before Ecuador President Rafael Correa approved the asylum bid, British authorities threatened to storm the embassy last week, prompting supporters of Assange and WikiLeaks to surround the building overnight in hopes of deterring any attempt by the UK to follow through with the extradition.

“If the UK did not throw away the Vienna conventions the other night, it is because the world was watching. And the world was watching because you were watching,” Assange told his supporters during his Sunday afternoon speech from London.

“So, the next time somebody tells you that it is pointless to defend those rights that we hold dear, remind them of your vigil in the dark before the Embassy of Ecuador."

In addition to lambasting the British for coming close to violating international law, Assange asked for US President Barack Obama to “do the right thing” and end his war on whistleblowing, saluting accused WikiLeaks contributor Private First Class Bradley Manning as a hero whose release from prison must be made immediately.

US in pursuit of Assange, cables reveal

Date

August 18, 2012

• 3 reading now

Philip Dorling

http://www.smh.com.au/national/us-in-pursuit-of-assange-cables-reveal-20120817-24e8u.html

Ecuador condemns UK stance on Assange

Ecuador's assembly votes to condemn the UK's threats to raid its London embassy as the international row heats up.

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EXCLUSIVE

AUSTRALIAN diplomats have no doubt the United States is still gunning for Julian Assange, according to Foreign Affairs Department documents obtained by The Saturday Age.

The Australian embassy in Washington has been tracking a US espionage investigation targeting the WikiLeaks publisher for more than 18 months.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Photo: Reuters

The declassified diplomatic cables, released under freedom of information laws, show Australia's diplomatic service takes seriously the likelihood that Assange will eventually be extradited to the US on charges arising from WikiLeaks obtaining leaked US military and diplomatic documents.

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This view is at odds with Foreign Minister Bob Carr's repeated dismissal of such a prospect.

Australia's ambassador to the US, former Labor leader Kim Beazley, has made high-level representations to the American government, asking for warning of any moves to prosecute Assange. However, briefings for Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Senator Carr suggest the Australian Government has no in-principle objection to Assange's extradition.

On Thursday, Ecuador granted Assange political asylum at its London embassy on the grounds that if extradited to Sweden to be questioned about sexual assault allegations he will be at risk of further extradition to the US to face espionage or conspiracy charges.

Last night, the diplomatic standoff continued. Foreign Secretary William Hague said Britain would not allow Assange safe passage out of the country, ''nor is there any legal basis for us to do so''. However, he later told reporters ''there is no threat here to storm an embassy''.

WikiLeaks announced on Twitter that Assange would give a statement outside the embassy tomorrow. Meanwhile, one of his defence lawyers said he would appeal to the International Court of Justice if Britain prevented him from going to Ecuador.

In May, Senator Carr told a Senate estimates committee hearing: "We have no advice that the US has an intention to extradite Mr Assange … nothing we have been told suggests that the US has such an intention."

However, the Australian embassy in Washington reported in February that "the US investigation into possible criminal conduct by Mr Assange has been ongoing for more than a year".

The embassy noted media reports that a US federal grand jury had been empanelled in Alexandria, Virginia, to pursue the WikiLeaks case and that US government officials "cannot lawfully confirm to us the existence of the grand jury".

Despite this, and apparently on the basis of still classified off-the-record discussions with US officials and private legal experts, the embassy reported the existence of the grand jury as a matter of fact. It identified a wide range of criminal charges the US could bring against Assange, including espionage, conspiracy, unlawful access to classified information and computer fraud.

Australian diplomats expect that any charges against Assange would be carefully drawn in an effort to avoid conflict with the First Amendment free speech provisions of the US constitution.

The cables also show that the Australian government considers the prospect of extradition sufficiently likely that, on direction from Canberra, Mr Beazley sought high-level US advice on "the direction and likely outcome of the investigation" and "reiterated our request for early advice of any decision to indict or seek extradition of Mr Assange".

The question of advance warning of any prosecution or extradition moves was previously raised by Australian diplomats in December 2010.

American responses to the embassy's representations have been withheld from release on the grounds that disclosure could "cause damage to the international relations of the Commonwealth".

Large sections of the cables have been redacted on national security grounds, including parts of reports on the open, pre-court martial proceedings of US Army Private Bradley Manning, who is alleged to have leaked a vast quantity of classified information to WikiLeaks.  Australian embassy representatives have attended all of Private Manning's pre-trial hearings.

Australian diplomats have highlighted the prosecution's reference to "several connections between Manning and WikiLeaks which would form the basis of a conspiracy charge" and evidence that the investigation has targeted the "founders, owners, or managers of WikiLeaks" for espionage.

However,  the embassy was unable to confirm the claim in a leaked email from an executive with US private intelligence company Stratfor, that "[w]e have a sealed indictment against Assange".

"Commentators have ...  suggested that the source may have been referring to a draft indictment used by prosecutors to 'game out' possible charges," the embassy reported in February. "There is no way to confirm the veracity of the information through official sources." 

A spokesperson for Senator Carr said yesterday Assange's circumstances remained a matter for the UK, Ecuador and Sweden, with Australia's role limited to that of a consular observer. 

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/national/us-in-pursuit-of-assange-cables-reveal-20120817-24e8u.html#ixzz23ys6eOGu

National Intelligence Leaks and the Hasbarafia

National Intelligence Leaks and the Hasbarafia

by RICHARD SILVERSTEIN on AUGUST 15, 2012 ·

in MIDEAST PEACE

Screenshot of original Hebrew version of Israeli government briefing document on Iran attack

UPDATE: My source has permitted me to publish the entire original Hebrew document, which you read here.  The English translation is in yesterday’s post:

When one publishes an important leaked Israeli government documentas I have done, one has to expect a counter-attack from the hasbarafia.  And it has come.  I’m going to share a few words on the background of the document and address some of the scurrilous charges raised about this matter.  Then I’m not going to address it again nor publish any further comments on it.

About a week ago, I received the document from a known and trusted source who is, as I’ve often said here, a former Israeli government minister. It was in turn leaked to him by an IDF officer.

Unbeknowst to my source, the original IDF leaker also gave the document to a member of the Fresh forum, an Israeli gossip and politics forum. That Fresh member wrote a largely fictional accountthat included very limited portions of the actual document which I published in full.

Contrary to claims made by many in the hasbarafia at sites like Harry’s Place and CIF Watch, anyone who actually reads the Fresh post and compares it to what I translated & published would see that there is very little overlap. Of the entire 500 word (in English translation) document, perhaps 100 words are in the Fresh post, which itself is quite long, probably over 1,000 words (I haven’t checked).

The truth is that I had the document for about four days, but didn’t publish it because I was negotiating with several media outlets about reporting it and also vetting it with several national security experts to ascertain its authenticity. As opposed to what I did, the Fresh member merely created a pastiche of the original and his own feverish imaginings.

As a journalist, you always wish to have exclusive use of leaked documents but you can’t control what a source does with materials he gives to you. I have opinions about the leak to Fresh, but there’s nothing I can do about that. I can only control my own actions and behavior, behind which I stand 100%.

I had nothing to do with anything published in Fresh and never visit the site. In fact, when I once attempted to publish a piece of news that was gagged I was banned there and have never returned since.  Personally, I have posted in the past at Rotter, whose politics are even more right-wing than Fresh.  The attacks against me at both sites have been vehement.  But Rotter never banned me despite those disagreements.  As far as I’m concerned Fresh is even worse and more reprehensible than Rotter.  This incident only further confirms that.

Frankly, I do not care what the hasbarafia thinks about me. What matters most is whether or not Israel begins a disastrous war against Iran. I received this document because my source and I both oppose the oncoming war (though I disagree with my source about a number of other things concerning Israel’s policy toward Iran). The goal was to expose a real document representing the real views of the real leaders who will take Israel to war.

I received this document under precisely the circumstances I described above. If the hasbarafia were honorable, which is a contradiction in terms, it would compare word for word my translation with the Fresh posting and concede that they are entirely different pieces of writing with the exception of a very small portion.  Rather the goal of the hasbarafia is to kill the messenger because you don’t like the message.  Their mission is to conduct scurrilous attacks on my honesty and professionalism because that will undo some of the damage caused by the leak.  It won’t work, but let them try.  They’ll waste their energy when they could be using it to do even more damage to Israel’s interests in some other enterprise.

Because I care about whether Israel attacks Iran, I published this document. My mission is focused on preventing a disastrous war. One way of doing this was to publish this document. If it has raised a debate inside Israel and in the international media on the issues, all to the good.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, no one from the Israeli government has come forward to deny the authenticity of the document. Ehud Barak was invited to speak on the BBC Newshour segment which first reported on the story and he refused. MK Danny Danon was interviewed by the BBC and he never doubted its authenticity.  In none of the coverage I’ve read (and here) in the Israeli media has any government official denied it. As far as I’m concerned, that seals the deal.

As for the hasbarafia, they can say what they want, but their lies will reflect on them, not on me.

SOLVING 9-11 - A REVIEW

www.barrychamish.com

SOLVING 9-11 - A REVIEW

by Barry Chamish

                                       
              
      I became acquainted with author Christopher Bollyn over a decade ago when he misused my research on the Ginossar scandal. If you recall, Yasir Arafat stole over $300m from his people and put it into Swiss bank accounts with the help of Israel's PLO liaison, Yossi Ginossar. By the time Bollyn had abused my research, Israel made Arafat steal the dough. When, livid, I confronted him about the exploitation, he replied to me, "How could Arafat use that kind of money from his hovel in Gaza?" Those are the kind of ethics that are in the back of my mind as I review his new book, Solving 9-11. (www.bollyn.com)
      Bollyn is a writer for deeply anti-semitic journals like Spotlight and The American Free Press. The opinions of his book, that Zionists were the force behind the 9-11 disaster, are becoming near gospel in the extreme Right community. You'd better not ignore them or risk facing a horrible future for Jews, because he is not completely wrong.
      Yes, you heard me.

[WIKILEAKS] Statement on UK threat to storm Ecuadorian embassy

Thursday 16th August, 3:00am UTC

In a communication this morning to the government of Ecuador, the UK
threatened to forcefully enter the Ecuadorian embassy in London and arrest
Julian Assange.

The UK claims the power to do so under the Diplomatic and Consular Premises
Act 1987.

This claim is without basis.

By midnight, two hours prior to the time of this announcement, the embassy had
been surrounded by police, in a menacing show of force.

Any transgression against the sanctity of the embassy is a unilateral and
shameful act, and a violation of the Vienna Convention, which protects
embassies worldwide.

This threat is designed to preempt Ecuador’s imminent decision on whether it
will grant Julian Assange political asylum, and to bully Ecuador into a
decision that is agreeable to the United Kingdom and its allies.

WikiLeaks condemns in the strongest possible terms the UK’s resort to
intimidation.

A threat of this nature is a hostile and extreme act, which is not
proportionate to the circumstances, and an unprecedented assault on the rights
of asylum seekers worldwide.

We draw attention to the fact that the United Nations General Assembly has
unanimously declared in Resolution 2312 (1967) that

"the grant of asylum. . . is a peaceful and humanitarian act and that, as
such, it cannot be regarded as unfriendly by any other State."

Pursuant to this resolution, a decision to grant asylum cannot be construed by
another State as an unfriendly act. Neither can there be diplomatic
consequences for granting asylum.

We remind the public that these extraordinary actions are being taken to
detain a man who has not been charged with any crime in any country.

WikiLeaks joins the Government of Ecuador in urging the UK to resolve this
situation according to peaceful norms of conduct.

We further urge the UK government to show restraint, and to consider the dire
ramifications of any violation of the elementary norms of international law.

We ask that the UK respect Ecuador’s sovereign right to deliver a decision of
its own making on Julian Assange’s asylum bid.

Noting that Ecuador has called for emergency summits of OAS and UNASUR in
response to this development, WikiLeaks asks those bodies to support Ecuador’s
rights in this matter, and to oppose any attempts to coerce a decision.

We note with interest that this development coincides with the UK Secretary of
State William Hague’s assumption of executive responsibilities during the
vacation of the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister.

Mr Hague’s department, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, has overseen the
negotiations to date with Ecuador in the matter of Mr Assange’s asylum bid.

If Mr Hague has, as would be expected, approved this decision, WikiLeaks calls
for his immediate resignation.

Australian Documentary on Julian Assange’s situation:
http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/stories/2012/07/19/3549280.htm

Friends of WikiLeaks Support Network: https://wlfriends.org

Justice for Assange: http://justice4assange.com

Mitt Romney Tied To Death Squads

Mitt Romney Started Bain Capital With Money From Families Tied To Death Squads

The Huffington Post, 08/08/2012

In 1983, Bill Bain asked Mitt Romney to launch Bain Capital, a private equity offshoot of the successful consulting firm Bain & Company. After some initial reluctance, Romney agreed. The new job came with a stipulation: Romney couldn't raise money from any current clients, Bain said, because if the private equity venture failed, he didn't want it taking the consulting firm down with it.

When Romney struggled to raise funds from other traditional sources, he and his partners started thinking outside the box. Bain executive Harry Strachan suggested that Romney meet with a group of Central American oligarchs who were looking for new investment vehicles as turmoil engulfed their region.

Romney was worried that the oligarchs might be tied to "illegal drug money, right-wing death squads, or left-wing terrorism," Strachan later told a Boston Globe reporter, as quoted in the 2012 book "The Real Romney." But, pressed for capital, Romney pushed his concerns aside and flew to Miami in mid-1984 to meet with the Salvadorans at a local bank.

It was a lucrative trip. The Central Americans provided roughly $9 million -- 40 percent -- of Bain Capital's initial outside funding, the Los Angeles Times reported recently. And they became valued clients.

"Over the years, these Latin American friends have loyally rolled over investments in succeeding funds, actively participated in Bain Capital's May investor meetings, and are still today one of the largest investor groups in Bain Capital," Strachan wrote in his memoir in 2008. Strachan declined to be interviewed for this story.

When Romney launched another venture that needed funding -- his first presidential campaign -- he returned to Miami.

"I owe a great deal to Americans of Latin American descent," he said at a dinner in Miami in 2007. "When I was starting my business, I came to Miami to find partners that would believe in me and that would finance my enterprise. My partners were Ricardo Poma, Miguel Dueñas, Pancho Soler, Frank Kardonski, and Diego Ribadeneira."

Romney could also have thanked investors from two other wealthy and powerful Central American clans -- the de Sola and Salaverria families, who the Los Angeles Times and Boston Globe have reported were founding investors in Bain Capital.

While they were on the lookout for investments in the United States, members of some of these prominent families -- including the Salaverria, Poma, de Sola and Dueñas clans -- were also at the time financing, either directly or through political parties, death squads in El Salvador. The ruling classes were deploying the death squads to beat back left-wing guerrillas and reformers during El Salvador's civil war.

The death squads committed atrocities on such a mass scale for so small a country that their killing spree sparked international condemnation. From 1979 to 1992, some 75,000 people were killed in the Salvadoran civil war, according to the United Nations. In 1982, two years before Romney began raising money from the oligarchs, El Salvador's independent Human Rights Commission reported that, of the 35,000 civilians killed, "most" died at the hands of death squads. A United Nations truth commission concluded in 1993 that 85 percent of the acts of violence were perpetrated by the right, while the left-wing Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front, which was supported by the Cuban government, was responsible for 5 percent.

When The Huffington Post asked the Romney campaign about Bain Capital accepting funds from families tied to death squads, a spokeswoman forwarded a 1999 Salt Lake Tribune article to explain the campaign's position on the matter. She declined to comment further.

"Romney confirms Bain had investors in El Salvador. But, as was Bain's policy with any big investor, they had the families checked out as diligently as possible," the Tribune wrote. "They uncovered no unsavory links to drugs or other criminal activity."

Nobody with a basic understanding of the region's history could believe that assertion.

By 1984, the media had thoroughly exposed connections between the death squads and the Salvadoran oligarchy, including the families that invested with Romney. The sitting U.S. ambassador to El Salvador charged that several families, including at least one that invested with Bain, were living in Miami and directly funding death squads. Even by 1981, El Salvador's elite, largely relocated to Miami, were so angered by the public perception that they were financing death squads that they reached out to the media to make their case. The two men put forward to represent the oligarchs were both from families that would invest in Bain three years later. The most cursory review of their backgrounds would have turned up the ties.

The connection between the families involved with Bain's founding and those who financed death squads was made by the Boston Globe in 1994 and the Salt Lake Tribune in 1999. This election cycle, Salon first raised the issue in January, and the Los Angeles Times filled out more of the record earlier this month.

There is no shortage of unsavory links. Even the Tribune article referred to by the Romney campaign reports that "about $6.5 million of $37 million that established the company came from wealthy El Salvadoran families linked to right-wing death squads."

The Salaverria family, whose fortune came from producing cotton and coffee, had deep connections to the right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA), a political party that death-squad leader Roberto D'Aubuisson founded in the fall of 1981. The year before, El Salvador's government had pushed through land reforms and nationalized the coffee trade, moves that threatened a ruling class whose financial and political dominance was built in large part on growing coffee. ARENA controlled and directed death squads during its early years.

On March 24, 1980, Oscar Romero, the archbishop of San Salvador and an advocate of the poor, was celebrating Mass at a chapel in a small hospital when he was assassinated on D'Aubuisson's orders, according to a person involved in the murder who later came forward.

The day before, Romero, an immensely popular figure, had called on the country's soldiers to refuse the government's orders to attack fellow Salvadorans.

"Before another killing order is given," he advised in his sermon, "the law of God must prevail: Thou shalt not kill."

In 1984, Robert White, the former U.S. ambassador to El Salvador, named two Salaverria brothers -- Julio and Juan Ricardo -- as two of six Salvadoran exiles in Miami who had directly funded death squads, repeating in sworn congressional testimony a claim he'd made earlier as ambassador. The group became known as the "Miami Six." White testified that a source close to the Miami Six had notified the U.S. embassy of their activities in January 1981.

White was pushed out of his job by the incoming Reagan administration in 1981; he was considered insufficiently supportive of the Salvadoran ruling class. (D'Aubuisson endorsed Ronald Reagan in 1984.) When contacted by phone recently, White reiterated his claim about the Salaverria brothers, but said he couldn't reveal his source's identity in order to protect the source.

"The Salaverria family were very well-known as backers of D'Aubuisson," White told The Huffington Post. "These guys were big-money contributors. ... They were total backers of D'Aubuisson and the extremist solution, including death squads."

Alfonso Salaverria was a close associate of Orlando de Sola, a leading death-squad figure, and, like him, supported D'Aubuisson.

The Salaverria family also violently resisted land reform efforts. When the Salvadoran government seized about 140 of the country's largest farms in March 1980, 73-year-old Raul Salaverria was the only landowner to openly resist, the Washington Post reported at the time. A brief exchange of gunfire between government forces and Salaverria's people resulted in two injuries, and 1,500 weapons were allegedly found on the property.

Eight years later, workers in an agrarian reform co-operative whose land once belonged to the Salaverrias barely escaped an assassination attempt. "Members of the co-op suspect the former owners, the Salaverria family, were behind the violence," a 1988 Human Rights Watch report said. The family denied involvement.

Francisco de Sola and his cousin, Herbert Arturo de Sola, also invested early in Bain, according to the Los Angeles Times. Two other members of the de Sola family were "limited partners," according to the Boston Globe, but the Romney campaign declined to provide The Huffington Post with their names. The de Sola family was one of El Salvador's most powerful coffee growers and a financier of the ARENA party.

Herbert's brother was the notorious Orlando de Sola, who resisted the peace negotiations toward the end of the civil war. The Romney campaign acknowledges Orlando de Sola's connection to death squads but insists he is not representative of the de Sola family investors. While Romney told the Tribune in 1999 that the backgrounds of the families had been checked diligently, he had explained to the Boston Globe in 1994 that Bain's due diligence included only the backgrounds of the individual investors, not their family members. "We investigated the individuals' integrity and looked for any obvious signs of illegal activity and problems in their background, and found none. We did not investigate in-laws and relatives." Deflecting the association with Orlando, Strachan, whom Romney had charged with vetting the investors, described him that same year to the Globe as "the black sheep of the family. ... He was kicked out of the family business."

Yet there is strong evidence that Orlando was anything but a black sheep in the de Sola family. Indeed, he was a leading public face of the Salvadoran elites in Miami, speaking, for example,on behalf of the El Salvador Freedom Foundation, the organization which arranged a U.S. press conference for D'Aubuisson as part of its public relations activities on behalf of the oligarchs and ARENA. An Associated Press story from April 1981 includes Orlando de Sola and Alfonso Salaverria speaking on behalf of the oligarchs in exile. The story also makes reference to White's charges regarding the funding of death squads, indicating that the charges were already well known by that point.

But the ties run deeper still. In 1990, Orlando de Sola, D'Aubuisson and founding Bain investor Francisco de Sola allegedly assassinated two left-wing activists then in Guatemala, according to a report by that country's government, which cited its intelligence sources. The activists had just held a meeting with then-Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), who was attempting to broker a Salvadoran peace deal.

Francisco de Sola later pleaded his and his cousin Orlando's innocence to the U.S. ambassador. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights looked further into the killings and concluded that elements of the Salvadoran right were indeed the mostly likely assassins, but said that it couldn't confirm the guilt of the de Solas or D'Aubuisson. It deemed the investigation incomplete and called for a deeper look. The three men were never charged.

Francisco de Sola is now president of the Salvadoran Foundation for Economic and Social Development. His assistant, Ada Chang, said that he was traveling and unavailable to comment, but she confirmed to HuffPost that he had been accused of murdering the two leftists in 1990. Whether he committed the crime or not, the fact that Guatemalan intelligence would associate him with Orlando de Sola and D'Aubuisson, and place them in Guatemala together, casts further doubt on Strachan's claim that Orlando de Sola was merely a "black sheep" who had been "kicked out of the family business."

Orlando de Sola, who is serving an unrelated prison sentence for fraud, told the Los Angeles Times that he did not personally benefit from the Bain investments. "I would say their relationship with Bain Capital was a step to diversify into foreign investments," he said of his family.

Ricardo Poma was the first investor Romney thanked when he traveled to Miami in 2007. The head of the Poma Group, he became one of the three members of the Bain Capital investment committee, according to Strachan's memoir. The Poma family were financiers of D'Aubuisson's ARENA party.

The Regalado-Dueñas family, like many of El Salvador's other powerful clans, amassed much of their wealth and political power through the coffee industry. Along with the Alvarez family, they also helped to found Banco Comercial, one of the biggest banks in El Salvador.

The Regalado-Dueñas and Alvarez families were leading supporters of ARENA. Arturo Dueñas "regularly supplied" the head of an ARENA-affiliated "paramilitary unit ... with a variety of official Salvadoran documents," according to a redacted 1984 CIA document, which uses the euphemism for death squad. (Salvadoran government documents were used by death squads to assemble lists of people to kill.)

Miguel Dueñas and Ricardo Poma did not respond to requests for comment. The Salaverria brothers are dead, according to Ambassador White.

Jeffery Paige, author of "Coffee and Power: Revolution and the Rise of Democracy in Central America" and a professor at the University of Michigan, has studied the political economy of Central American oligarchies. Romney's claim to have checked out the backgrounds of the families and come away satisfied befuddles Paige.

"These people benefited from one of the most exploitative and repressive agricultural systems in Latin America. That's why they had a revolution," Paige said. "This money, certainly there wasn't much concern where it came from and what these people had done to make that money."

Sergio Bendixen, who now does polling for President Barack Obama, spent a significant amount of time in El Salvador in the early '80s, doing political polling for Univision. He said that he met D'Aubuisson on many occasions and found him to be one of the warmest, most charming and charismatic people he has ever met. But he said D'Aubuisson was also very upfront about what he saw as the justifiable use of death squads.

"There were 10 or 30 bodies in the street every morning," Bendixen recalled of his time there. "D'Aubuisson said it was necessary. The message needed to be sent [that] if you were associated with the communists or socialists, you had to be killed. He said it was an instrument in keeping the violence down, because others would see the consequences."

Bendixen suggested that a cursory look would have shown Romney what those families were involved with. "If anybody tries to tell you there was a line, a Chinese wall, between ARENA and the death squads, that's just not the way it was," he said.

The Salvadoran elite in Miami talked openly at the time, he said, of supporting the death squads battling the rebels. It wasn't a source of shame, Bendixen recalled, but a source of pride. "They were proud of the fact that they were supporting their country against the communists," he said.

As Romney now seeks support from the Latino community in his campaign for president, his knowledge of Bain's all-too-few degrees of separation from Salvadoran death squads may become a topic of interest.

"Under Ronald Reagan, the U.S. sent billions of dollars to the murderous regime, which utilized that aid to fund the military and death squads in an effort to preserve the unjust privileges of the Salvadoran oligarchy," said Arturo J. Viscarra, an immigration lawyer, who, like many other Salvadorans, emigrated to the United States in order to escape the civil war. He said his family left the country in 1980 after his father began receiving death threats.

"To now learn that a man that may become president of the U.S. deserves some of his success due to the incredible inequality that the U.S. helped to preserve in El Salvador is ironic," Viscarra said. "It's morbidly funny.”

The U.S. involvement in the bloodshed is now seen as a black mark on the nation's record. When President Obama visited Central America in March 2011, he made a symbolic stop at Romero's grave, lighting a candle for the archbishop.

Romney, however, has shown no public remorse for signing up such investors, although the concept of culpability is not foreign to him. When he returned to Miami in 2007, he condemned those who had financed torture and other human rights abuses during the Salvadoran civil war -- just not those he was connected to.

"These friends didn't just help me; they taught me," Romney said. "Ricardo's brother had been tortured and murdered by rebel terrorists in El Salvador. Miguel himself had been chained to a floor in Guatemala for weeks and tortured. And their torturers were financed by Fidel Castro. I learned from these friends about the human cost when Castro has money."