PRESS RELEASE
Is Fran Townsend the White House Choice for Attorney General?
Aug. 27, 2007 (EIRNS)—With today's announcement by President George W. Bush that he has accepted Alberto Gonzales' resignation as Attorney General, the question on everybody's mind is: Who will Bush choose as Gonzales' replacement? Well-placed Washington sources have told Executive Intelligence Review that, despite all of the media hype about the current Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, the actual White House favorite is Fran Townsend, who is the counter-terrorism and homeland security aide to the President. According to these sources, there are two primary reasons why both President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney are partial to Townsend.
First, Townsend has been Dick Cheney's trusted emissary to Saudi Arabia for the past year, and has closer ties to Prince Bandar bin-Sultan and other top Saudi officials than anyone else in the Bush-Cheney inner circle. Were she to be named as Attorney General, Townsend would, according to the sources, "move heaven and earth" to cover up the BAE scandal. Despite scant media coverage, there is tremendous pressure in and around the Department of Justice to seriously probe that BAE-Saudi "Al Yamamah" contract, and the estimated $2 billion laundered into Saudi bank accounts at Riggs Bank in Washington, as payoffs to Prince Bandar, who was then the Saudi Ambassador to the United States. The DOJ is already investigating whether the Bandar payments constituted a violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, and there is further evidence that the transactions also violated money laundering laws that were tightened in 1997.
The second reason that Townsend is reportedly the White House's first choice to be named Attorney General, is that she shares Gonzales' commitment to serve as a firewall against any serious Justice Department probes into criminality and impeachable offenses by the President, the Vice President and other top Administration officials. Chertoff, the sources say, would be less likely to throw away his career and reputation to fall on the sword for George Bush or even Dick Cheney.
Informed of these reports about the possibility of a Townsend appointment, Lyndon LaRouche commented that, whatever happens now, the President and Vice President are in very big trouble. In a statement on Aug. 26, LaRouche had called for the immediate announcement of the withdrawal of all American troops from Iraq, in light of the accelerating mortgage and banking crisis in the United States and the global financial collapse it signals. In the context of that call, today he demanded an accelerated drive to remove Dick Cheney from office now.
