Al Gore: The Most Corrupt Man
Never Elected President
by Jeffrey Steinberg
Vice President Albert Gore, Jr. may go down in the history books as the most corrupt politician never to be elected U.S. President. Gore's list of leading fundraisers reads like a who's who of the late Meyer Lansky's National Crime Syndicate's inventory of front-men; and, as the son of the late Sen. Albert Gore, Sr.—of Armand Hammer infamy—Al, Jr. has made it his personal crusade to cover up billions of dollars in political thievery by some of Russia's most well-known "reformers." Furthermore, there is growing evidence that the Vice President has established a close link to mega-swindler George Soros, the biggest bankroller of the worldwide movement to legalize drugs.
Perhaps the biggest skeleton in Gore's fundraising closet is that of Howard Glicken, a Florida precious metals dealer whose company, Metalbanc, was prosecuted as part of the Drug Enforcement Administration's "Operation Polar Cap" in November 1991 for laundering the drug proceeds of the Medellín Cartel. Glicken avoided a long jail sentence by striking a deal with prosecutors that sent his partner, Harry Falk, to prison for 27 years. On May 5, 1997, Falk told the Wall Street Journal that Glicken had used Metalbanc to launder funds into Gore's 1988 unsuccessful Presidential campaign.
Glicken tools around Coral Gables, Florida in a pair of Jaguars bearing the license plates "Gore-1" and "Gore-2." Gore's chief Florida fundraiser since 1987, Glicken recently pled guilty to campaign money-laundering, and was ordered to pay an $80,000 fine and put in 500 hours of community service. He avoided jail time, once again, by "helping Federal prosecutors investigate public corruption in Miami," according to a recent Washington Post account.
Gore's 1988 national campaign fundraising effort was headed by another "businessman" with alleged ties to organized crime, Maryland real estate millionaire Nate Landow. Landow was drawn into Democratic Party fundraising by the "prince of thieves," Robert Strauss, on the eve of Jimmy Carter's 1976 Presidential campaign. Landow had high hopes of being named ambassador to the Netherlands, as a payoff for his money-raising wizardry. But his prospects of a diplomatic career were scotched as soon as the FBI began its background checks.
It seems that Landow's rags-to-riches success in the Washington-Maryland real estate bonanza of the early 1970s had drawn him into several business deals with the Lansky and Gambino syndicates. In the early 1970s, Landow invested in a Florida masonry company backed by the Gambino family loan-shark Anthony Plate. Later in the 1970s, Landow hired Joe Nesline, Lansky's point-man in the nation's capital, as a "consultant" on a casino-building project in Atlantic City, New Jersey. In January 1978, Nesline's home wsa raided by the FBI, and documents were seized that identified Landow as one of his partners in D.C.-area construction projects. Landow was interrogated by the FBI but never charged with any crimes.
Gore's New York Presidential fundraising effort in 1988 was headed by Noach Dear, a former New York City Councilman from the Borough Park section of Brooklyn, who was part of the inner circle of Jewish Defense League founder and terrorist Rabbi Meir Kahane. Dear tapped into a rich vein of right-wing Jewish cash for Gore's ill-conceived 1988 Presidential bid, but wound up helping to sink Gore in New York's primary elections, by tying him to New York's Mayor Ed Koch, at a moment when Koch was being assailed by the city's African-American community for a series of racist remarks and actions.
Those 1988 gaffes did not prompt Gore to distance himself from his Likudnik money man. In fact, Dear has accompanied the Vice President on several trips to Israel, introducing him to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and to the Mayors of Judea and Sumeria. Dear's close ties to Gore did not stop him from launching into public tirades against First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, following her comments on the right of Palestinians to have their own sovereign nation. On May 22, 1998, Dear penned a signed editorial in the Jewish Press, a right-wing New York City weekly, demanding the release of convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Jay Pollard.
Viktor's gold
On Nov. 23, 1998, the New York Times revealed that Gore's affinity for dirty-money handlers extends overseas. In 1995, when the Central Intelligence Agency developed "highly credible evidence" that Russia's Prime Minister, Viktor Chernomyrdin, was parlaying his government post into a personal fortune in payoffs and theft of Russia's national oil patrimony, Gore told the Agency in no uncertain terms: Don't go there. According to the Times, Gore sent the report back to the CIA "with a barnyard epithet" handwritten across the top of the cover page. The CIA had provided Gore, who has headed the administration's official diplomatic channels to Moscow since 1993, with similar evidence of corruption by the International Monetary Fund's Russian "wunderkind," Anatoli Chubais, with similar results.
