You know, I always suspected that Martha Stewart was hung out to dry by Bush operatives as a smokescreen for the real criminal case of the century: ENRON. The minute the full force of the Enron criminal case hit the media radar back in early 2002, suddenly and serendipitously, so did the Martha Stewart ImClone scandal. And it stayed that way for weeks! Everytime a Ken Lay item would make page 2, Martha made page I. Now, here today, I see that on page E2 of the "Washington Post," at the top of the page, there is a big, 5" X 3" photo of Martha, with a headline below making a reference to her company's losses due to an "insider trading probe." Down below, beneath the fold is this headline: "More Enron Charges Expected Today," followed by a story that doesn't even take up the same square inchage as the Stewart photo.

I bet nearly no one out in the land of Joe Public knows that, while Stewart is being pilloried for allegedly knowingly selling off her stock before it nosedived, a much bigger player in ImClone, John Mendelsohn, who also happens to be a close Bush buddy, has gotten off without so much as a hand slap or whisper from the press. This, despite the fact that Mendelsohn committed a far worse crime than Stewart - even if she does prove to be guilty. While Mendelsohn was head researcher into the cancer drug being developed by ImClone - not to mention president of the MD Anderson Cancer Center where the trials were held, he failed to tell the desperate colon cancer patients who volunteered for the drug trials that he had a financial stake in the drug. By the way - in addition to being pres. of the Cancer Center, Mendelsohn was also an exec at Enron. Mendelsohn has close ties to the Bush's - George and Barbara have long been major figures at the Anderson Cancer Center, both as members of the board of directors, and as overall fund-raising schmoozers (too bad most funds go to paying inflated administrative salaries). Mendelsohn was the guy G. W. Bush called in for a private one-on-one tete a tete at the White House in late August of 2001, allegedly to ask his advice on the stem cell issue. Mendelsohn is also a close confidant and business partner of Ken Lay...the same Ken Lay who donated over $50,000 to the MD Anderson Cancer Center each year for some years in a row with the stipulation that the money go to the fund presided over by the Bushes. Another Enron CEO, Charles LeMaistre, was president emeritus of the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. So, you get the cozy, incestuous picture. All roads seem to lead to the Cancer Center - heroic health facilities have always made great smokescreens and/or backdrops for wheeling dealing. I mean, who will pester you with suspicions if you appear to be doing good works as your main objective?

There is a wealth of evidence out there (if a reporter with a salary actually wanted to bother to pursue it) that the entire ImClone crash was engineered by Bush-friendly people within the pharmaceutical industry and the FDA to deflect the force of the Enron story as it burst onto the public scene. The guy in charge of reviewing cancer drugs for the FDA is Richard Padzur. Guess where Padzur worked before as professor emeritus, and with whom he still has close ties? The M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. It was from Pazdur's office that the editors of the journal "Cancer Research" received an anonymous tip (the famous "arranged leak" scheme) suggesting that ImClone's drug wasn't going to pass the FDA's final muster. It was this leaked tip that led to the panic that caused ImClone founder Sam Waksal to(allegedly) frantically call friends and relatives. Can you spell S.E.T. U.P.?

I personally think Stewart was telling the truth - her broker had orders to sell off ImClone when it dipped below a certain point. I also suspect that Martha's brokerage firm was infested by a mole who leaked this info to persons with a vested interest in engineering the crash of ImClone. The object of this frame game would be, of course, to provide the Bush people with a very high profile celebrity to pillory to the press - one so well known that it could not fail to all but cancel out the effect of Enron in the media. That way, the many strands of the Enron spider web leading to the White House would go unnoticed - at least long enough to be covered up. Better yet, to the Bush cartel's thinking, was the fact that Stewart is a Democrat who gave very generously to the Gore campaign.

It seems that, prior to late December, 2001, no one at ImClone had any inkling that the FDA had serious problems with their research data. The only problems were minor, at least according to the standard that is routinely applied to the industry. If you do some poking around in the area of drug development, you will discover that outright fraud is often ignored or given a mild reprimand! Yet ImClone was tossed to the wolves over "sloppiness."

Here's an excerpt from a 2002 story in the North Country Times about the hearings on ImClone:

"Lawmakers wanted to know when ImClone knew Erbitux was in trouble. Harlan Waksal said he didn't "have any inkling" until after a Dec. 12 conversation with FDA officials. Bristol said it learned on Christmas Eve that the FDA rejection was imminent, and alerted Waksal. Waksal said he notified other ImClone employees on Dec. 26, but denied alerting relatives. Bristol's information came from a consultant tipped by an FDA worker, and one lawmaker demanded to know how such an agency leak could have occurred. The FDA "bears a great deal of responsibility" because leaks create "the temptation to go out and dump" their stock, Rep. Billy Tauzin, R-La., told reporters after the hearing. Waksal also told lawmakers he didn't know if anyone had consulted with domestic lifestyle celebrity Martha Stewart, who also sold 3,000 shares of ImClone on Dec. 27. She has said it was a standing order to sell if the stock fell below $60 per share, which it did that day. "

A search of things written both in the news and in weblogs during the height of the Martha Stewart witch hunt shows a clear pattern: every week there was an indictment in the Enron case, or a new revelation, there was a parallel and more publicized revelation in the Stewart case. This overlap is an old CIA-style strategy that can be described as "confuse and redirect" - a sort of media bait and switch. It worked. In scanning through google, I found that back in 2002 at the height of the Enron/Stewart flaps, there was mucho confusion as to who was being investigated for what and who was being indicted and why. Many people at news issues forums said they had assumed Ken Lay had been indicted in March. Which of course, he hadn't. Only his accounting firm, Anderson, was indicted, while Stewart was supoenaed. Beneath this smokescreen, - the guy who stole the retirement hopes of tens of thousands still walks scott free, unharassed by guestions, let alone press coverage. Those huge donations to the Bush campaign were the best investments Ken Lay ever made.

So, here we are in 2003 and, after a virtual news blackout on Enron for months and months, we see the story returning of necessity (new charges) - complete with a Martha Stewart smokescreen.

See:

Overview of ImClone Crash

http://216.239.37.100/search?q=cache:WhgMChjiQPUC:biz.yahoo.com/rb/030304/health_imclone_1.html+John+Mendelsohn+ImClone&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

Mendelsohn Conflict of Interest case: notice how this story was buried in the "tech" section - while Stewart consistently made page one or top-of-the-section.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A3025-2002Jun30

Richard Pazdur's background: scroll down to section headed by his name:

http://216.239.37.100/search?q=cache:twaW4DsWDhwC:www7.nationalacademies.org/step/MedInnovConfBios.doc+Pazdur+former+researcher+at+MD+Anderson+Cancer+Clinic&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

Mendelsohn named to Enron Board of Directors - while continuing to be President of the MD Anderson Cancer Center.

http://www.enron.com/corp/pressroom/releases/1999/ene/48-newdirectrelease.html

George and Barbara Bush guests of honor at MD Anderson Cancer Center Bash - hosted at Enron field.

http://www.tmc.edu/tmcnews/10_15_01/page_07.html

Ken Lay's donations to MD Anderson Cancer Center total over $600,000 http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/special/enron/dec01/1185623 (scroll down to last half of story