Congressman Peter Welch. VTD/Josh Larkin

Spain. Russia. Egypt. Cuba. Belgium. Oman. Haiti. Afghanistan.

What those countries have in common is that they are among the nations that members of Vermont’s congressional delegation have visited during the past two years.

U.S. senators and representatives make thousands of trips annually, some on the taxpayers’ coin and others as the guests of private corporations or nonprofit groups. The privately financed trips usually are offered in the hopes that, in one way or another, the lawmakers will give back something in return — perhaps in helping pass or kill certain legislation or by burnishing the image or reputation of the group that extends the invitation.

Rules on such congressional junkets were tightened five years ago, and members are now required to get prior permission for privately financed trips. They also must file expense and disclosure reports. Still, travel by senators and representatives is closely scrutinized by public interest groups, who want to assure that lawmakers are not unduly influenced by outside organizations offering them free vacations to some exotic land or resort. Or, if they are so influenced, at least disclosure might allow the public to be aware of the connection.

Vermont’s three lawmakers — U.S. Sens. Patrick Leahy and Bernard Sanders and U.S. Rep. Peter Welch — are relatively modest in their travel habits and describe most of their journeys, both domestic and foreign, as being of value for the work they do in Congress. For the most part, they travel on government-financed trips as part of congressional delegations looking into issues that come under the aegis of their committee work.

“There are many good reasons for lawmakers to travel, as well as some bad ones,” says Leahy. “Disclosure and the Senate’s rules are checks on abuse.”

When it comes to trips paid for by the federal government, Welch has journeyed during the past two years to Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Afghanistan, Oman, Egypt, France, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Cuba, and Colombia (encompassing four separate trips) — all as a member of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform and its Subcommittee on National Security, Homeland Defense, and Foreign Operations.

Sanders has made one government-financed overseas journey during this session of Congress, to Pakistan and Afghanistan, not on committee assignment, but to assess the situation in those two war- and terrorist-scarred nations, to meet with the Afghani and Pakistani presidents and other high-ranking officials, and to visit with U.S. troops from Vermont.

Leahy, the state’s senior member in Washington, took three foreign trips in 2011 and 2012. He was part of the same congressional delegation as Rep. Welch on the visits to Haiti, Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Colombia, and he also traveled to Russia, Ireland, and Belgium, all in his capacity as chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee’s State Department and Foreign Operations Subcommittee.

Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. Photo by Terry J. Allen

As for trips paid for by outside organizations, Welch participated in a conference in Spain last September sponsored by the Aspen Institute on “Policy Changes in the Muslim World.” The cost of Welch’s trip to Spain, picked up entirely by the institute, was $7,737.91. That money covered the congressman’s travel to Spain and all expenses, including room and meals. Scott Coriell, Welch’s spokesman, says the conference was related to Welch’s work on the Middle East as a member of the Oversight subcommittee that deals with security, terrorism, and foreign affairs. The Aspen Institute, a non-partisan think tank, also paid for Welch’s wife to accompany him on the trip.

Sanders has taken two trips this session on someone else’s dime, both domestic. On one, he spoke to a labor group, the United Steel, Paper and Forestry, Rubber, Manufacturing, Allied Industrial and Service Workers International Union, in Las Vegas. The cost to the union for that journey was $609. Sanders also flew to Los Angeles last year to appear on the television show, “Real Time with Bill Maher,” a program he has appeared on in previous sessions of Congress. His appearance cost the show $1,700.84.

A Sanders spokesman, Michael Briggs, says both of those trips afforded the senator the opportunity to speak before large groups of people on issues that he’s been working on in Washington, such as saving Social Security and reversing the recent Supreme Court decision that  enables large corporate spending on federal elections. The senator receives an honorarium of about $700 to $800 for appearing on the television show, which he turns over to Vermont charities, according to Briggs.

Sanders again appeared on the Bill Maher show this January, but since he combined that visit with several campaign events in the Los Angeles area, his political campaign paid for the trip to the West Coast. “It would not have been kosher to let the show pay for his campaign,” Briggs explained.

Leahy has not made any trips this session on behalf of outside groups.

While some may be wary of congressional trips and ask whether even government-sponsored travel is worth the money spent on it, Leahy thinks travel often contributes to a lawmaker’s capacity to legislate intelligently.

“As the late Sen. Paul Simon often pointed out, members of Congress generally travel too little to broaden their understanding, considering the importance of the decisions they must make,” says Leahy. “The panel that I chair makes hundreds of decisions each year about U.S. interests, activities and priorities that literally span the globe, funding billions of dollars in overseas programs ranging from the operations of our embassies to famine relief. There is no substitute for seeing some of this work in person and in context.”

Yet not everyone thinks such trips, at least those paid for by private interests, are warranted. Even with the more rigorous travel restrictions enacted in 2007, some watchdog groups see loopholes that enable lawmakers to escape some of the strictures.

The Honest Leadership and Open Government Act put restrictions on privately sponsored congressional trips. For instance, those offered by registered lobbyists had to be kept to one day. Members also must receive approval from the House or Senate Ethics committees for privately sponsored travel in advance of taking the trips.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, right, and Jim Coutts, director of the Franklin County Senior Center speaking on Thursday. VTD/Anne Galloway

But some public interest groups say the two Ethics committees are not being vigilant enough in blocking unwarranted congressional travel. Last year, private groups spent more than $6 million to ferry lawmakers around the globe — an increase of $2.5 million over the previous year. That’s why some groups that monitor Congress are concerned that the fervor ignited by the Abramoff era excesses has now cooled and that lawmakers once again are feeling more comfortable feeding off the lobbyists’ trough. These public interest groups contend that Congress typically will act to quell public furor in the face of scandal by tweaking laws rather than by making comprehensive changes, and then once the scandal has passed, old habits will eventually return.

Craig Holman, the government affairs lobbyist for the group, Public Citizen, says lobbyists and lawmakers are now crawling through a gaping loophole in the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act that is allowing lawmakers once again to be feted to lavish traveling by lobbyists. The Ethics committees are allowing lobbyists to establish 501(c)3 tax-exempt, non-profit arms, through which money can be funneled to sponsor congressional travel. These 501(c)3 groups exist on paper only, according to Holman. They then pay for congressional travel that the law was intended to bar.

Holman said that congressional trips should be limited to those sponsored by the government, to avoid the taint of lobbyists seeking something in return for giving free travel to members of Congress. But, he adds, the disclosure system for government travel is weak, and it often is difficult to determine the cost of congressional trips on the government tab.

It can be difficult, or even impossible, to pinpoint the precise costs of government trips for each individual member of a congressional delegation, since many congressmen and staff members often are included on the mission, and government aircraft are used in almost all cases.

The Wall Street Journal has reported that government spending on congressional travel has increased almost 10-fold since 1995.

VTDigger

Greg Palast. Courtesy photo.

When Greg Palast runs a stakeout it can take him and his media team from the Gulf of Mexico to Alaska, Azerbaijan and beyond. On assignment for BBC and The Guardian, he is a relentless investigator, tracking down the crimes of corporate predators who profit from national tragedies and a corrupt financial system.

In his new book, Vultures’ Picnic, Palast has pulled together documents and stories from more than three decades of detective work, unraveling the schemes of what he labels the “Energy-finance Combine” and exposing several real life “vulture” capitalists.

On Dec. 12, he will visit Burlington and share some of his findings at Main Street Landing during a 7 p.m. talk titled “Why We Occupy: How Wall Street Picks the Bones of America,” which is sponsored by Toward Freedom.

Palast is after very big game, powerful figures like Gulf Coast billionaire R. King Milling, banker and former chair of both British Petroleum and Goldman Sachs International Peter Sutherland, Michael Sheehan (a.k.a. Goldfinger), who made millions on Zambia’s debt, and “uber-vulture” Paul Singer, another billionaire who is currently helping Mitt Romney run for president.

Why are they called vultures? The name was actually bestowed – “with admiration” – by their banks, Palast notes. “They are international repo men who seize control of the finances of some of the poorest nations on the planet. They get old debts and collect hundreds of times of what they have spent,” he explains.

“The No. 1 U.S. vulture is Paul Singer, an economic advisor to Mitt Romney,” he noted in an interview with VTDigger.org.

In Vultures’ Picnic, Palast reveals that Singer, also a top donor to the Republican Party, “picked up bonds with a face value printed on them of $100 million” during the Congo’s civil wars. He paid about $10 million, but won a judgment to collect $400 million.”

Earlier, Singer also made a killing on Owens Corning, buying the company cheap after revelations that its asbestos plants were linked to worker deaths.

“Simply by cutting the amount paid to the victims, he could boost the company’s value,” Palast explains. Over time legal and public attacks on the workers “chiseled away the compensation expected to be paid by the asbestos companies, boosting the firms’ net worth. Singer then flipped Corning, selling it for a neat billion-dollar profit.”

But what drove Singer to go after Palast, he thinks, was his report “from the Congos (there are two nations in Africa called ‘Congo’) where there’s a cholera epidemic due to lack of clean water. Singer paid we’re told about $10 million for some ‘debt’ supposedly incurred by the Republic of Congo. Congo would pay the $10 million, but Singer had begun seizing about $400 million in the poor nation’s assets.”

A recent call to the BBC in London from Singer’s office conveyed a simple but chilling message: We have a file on Greg Palast.

“They really want to smear me and implied that a lawsuit was coming,” he says. “So, these are not minor players. Singer makes his money by literally killing babies, according to the former Deputy Secretary of the UN. And what Singer wants is Palast off the air.”

What’s in that threatening file? Palast tells the story himself in the book. As he put it recently, “I was caught going ‘undercover’ on an investigation with a comely young politician to get information. (Got the story …and my photo on the front page of the Mirror.) There. Read it all and see the photos in Chapter 9. Now you have it. Now I’ve taken away their favorite bullet: character assassination.”

Covering scenes of corporate crime

Vultures’ Picnic isn’t just a book, although it is an entertaining, sometimes startling read. It is also a long-term, multi-media project that includes a video companion, an enhanced online version with electronic files, a comic book series, and investigative TV reports for BBC and Democracy Now!

Palast suggests downloading Chapter One free from his website for a taste.

As the subtitle suggests, it is a story of pursuit, in this case a hunt for “petroleum pigs, power pirates, and high-finance carnivores.” Palast calls his approach to the material “reportage verité.” Others describe it as “pulp non-fiction,” almost a new genre.

When asked why he opted for a style that reads like a real-life detective story, gradually revealing clues rather than laying out conclusions up front, he replies, “People know about me from reporting on the presidential voting scandal. There I gave you the information that I cover. I thought it was important to say how I’m getting it – and sometimes failing to get it.”

Vultures' Picnic by Greg Palast.

In the past Palast has looked into the grounding of the Exxon Valdez, investigated Enron and worked with advocacy groups fighting corporate misdeeds. In 1988, he headed a civil racketeering probe into the Long Island Light Company. It looked like a great victory with a jury award of $4.8 billion, but a federal judge reversed the verdict. In 2000 Palast assembled evidence that Gov. Jeb Bush and his allies in Florida had rigged ballots to deliver the state for George W Bush. Four years later, he charged that vote “spoilage” had changed another presidential election outcome.

This story begins in the midst of a tense New York stakeout, then moves rapidly from Azerbaijan to Africa and the Arctic as he searches for the truth about BP’s Deepwater Horizon disaster. What he discovers is a cover up: an identical blow-out, just like the one in the Gulf of Mexico, two years earlier in the Caspian Sea.

“The information we got from an eyewitness right after the blow out was that this was not the first time,” he says. “And it was the same reason, cheap crap cement. And they covered it up by beatings and bribery and blow jobs. Vulture Picnic is saying that they covered this up – and by doing that eleven guys died. I’m saying, as a former racketeering and fraud investigator, that it was a crime.”

Forget official claims of shock, he says. “All the oil companies knew about the problem prior to the blow out, and the Department of State may have hidden it from Congress.”

There has so far been no admission of prior knowledge, and, in any case, few questions have been asked by the U.S. press. Unlike journalists operating in the United States, however, Palast, an American who grew up in Los Angeles, is required under British law to present his evidence as a journalist to those he accuses.

“And they have never denied it,” he said. “Did you have another blow out? No denial, just blah blah blah.” Over the years, he adds, the British government has become an arm of BP’s imperial power.

And what is BP an arm of? “Actually, BP is an arm of Morgan Stanley,” he replies. “It used to be that BP was an extension of military intelligence, now the roles are reversed.”

He says he has identified at least three crimes committed in this case. No. 1 is that “BP destroyed the Caspian Sea and the Gulf. The Gulf of Mexico is a crime scene. Crime number two: The government knew and covered it up. And crime number three,” he continues, “The U.S. press is ignoring it, except maybe a public whipping, maybe.”

Palast has limited respect for most mainstream media. “The New York Times is a local paper that does gossip,” he says, “and NPR has become the National Petroleum Network. In Britain I’m mainstream, I work for the BBC and the Guardian. So, they can’t tell us that they didn’t know this.”

When he brings an exposé across the Atlantic such outlets rarely cover the story and tend to treat him like an “alternative” journalist. Although he enjoys working with Amy Goodman and Pacifica Radio, the situation can be frustrating. Even when there is coverage, it often misses the bigger point.

“I hate the bad apple model,” he explains, referring to the media’s preference for finding individual culprits over taking on institutional problems “That’s why I hated the Enron story,” he recalls. “I wrote about it as an example. The whole tree is rotten to the roots; that is the key. And the so-called investigative journalists are the biggest part of the cover up because they find a bad guy for you to pick on. This justifies the status quo.”

Cement, steel and fraud

Since Palast is visiting Vermont, the conversation turned to nuclear power and the expectation that Vermont Yankee may close next March. “The operative word is ‘may,’ he notes before pivoting to diesel generators, Japan’s Fukushima plant disaster, and his investigation of the Shoreham nuclear plant more than 25 years ago.

In a chapter called Fukushima, Texas, Vultures’ Picnic tackles how nuclear plant owners — from Tokyo Electric to Entergy – pinch pennies and play games with emergency standards such as Seismic Qualification. Palast often gets help in his investigations from whistleblowers and others with inside knowledge or secret documents to share. In this case the sources are insiders who have worked with nuclear emergency diesels.

In a crisis, one source explains, they must go “from stationary to taking a full load in less than ten seconds.” In addition, plant operators often “turbo-charge” diesels rather than buy more. At least two diesels failed at Fukushima before the tsunami hit, he learns. “What destroyed those diesels was turning them on. In other words, the diesels are crap,” Palast writes.

“There is no way those generators can fire up,” he continues, then backs up a bit. “Actually, maybe a 50 percent chance. In nuclear power, the problem is always something cheap. There are three things involved in every plant: cement, steel and fraud.”

It’s a bold charge, and he has documents to back it up. Asked whether this extends to Entergy, owner of Vermont Yankee, he recalled investigating the company for the City of New Orleans, in the days before he became a journalist. Palast studied economics with Milton Freidman at the University of Chicago before striking out as a corporate crime investigator.

“I went through their books and found a corrupt cesspool,” he says. “The NRC calls the standard ‘management integrity.’ They don’t have it.”

In the book, he puts it this way: “I have investigated dozens of nuclear operators, and in every case, no exceptions, I found this: Fraud is as much a part of the structure of a nuclear plant as the cement and steel.”

Shouting from across the water

Palast chronicles the trail of greed and disaster that follow in the wake of finance vultures. The book is fun, despite the grave subject matter, because of his deft mixture of outrage, bravado and self-deprecating humor. Palast is a clever and generous storyteller, and he gives full and frequent credit to a globe-hopping team that includes the beautiful and seductive Ms. Badpenny.

The plot has many twists, so it’s possible to lose sight of the main subjects. Goldfinger, for instance. “There really is a Goldfinger,” he says, “and compared to him the movie villain was a girl scout. The vultures get their hands on money that they claim is owed by the poorest nations, usually during a civil war. Then they find loopholes and seize all the wealth.”

In the book’s opening chapter Palast describes how he uncovered that the real Goldfinger, also known as Michael Francis Sheehan, “bribed the President of Zambia with $3 million. In return he let Goldfinger collect a phony debt and take $45 million off the Zambian treasury – the money we gave them to fight AIDs. This is also a crime.”

Later, investigating the Gulf oil disaster leads Palast to the Whitney Bank, the JP Morgan of the Gulf Coast, and its former president R. King Milling, who connects Big Oil with Big Banking and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal’s wasteful Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority. “The man is the maestro,” Palast concludes. “He has figured out how to completely control the terms of the debate.”

Back in London, Palast tracks down a secretive group of banking and insurance leaders ever hungry for deregulation. They used to be known as the Unnamables, until the BBC outted them and the name was changed to LOTIS, short for Liberalization of Trade in Services. One of its leading members is Peter Sutherland, in some circles called “the father of globalization.” Founding Director-General of the World Trade Organization, once a chairman at both Goldman Sachs and BP, Palast sees him as “the Energy-Finance Combine in one bespoke suit.”

What’s it like to confront someone like that? “I find that the government guys are just careerists. But the actual vultures are brilliant and frightening, and most are fairly charming,” Palast says. “You really have to know your stuff, and not get charmed. Think back: How many news guys licked the loafers of Ken Lay?”

In the interview, we were back to his disdain for lazy reporting. On the other hand, Palast prefers his role as a journalist to his earlier career as a professional investigator digging into financial misdeeds.

Making the change was necessary, he says. “What was the point of doing this, I thought, when I had to dump stuff in a file and seal it? I was going insane, not being able to make this public.

“Going public is vital to me. In London I am on the front page, and all over Europe and Africa. Here I can barely get on the radio,” he laments. “But at least I can shout from across the water, as opposed to not being able to say anything because it’s under seal.”

Despite years of exposing an economic system in which finance vultures devour whole countries, where “donor nations” like Switzerland, Norway, Britain and the United States actually make a killing on collapsed economies, and where the Energy-Finance Combine collects the biggest spoils, Palast nevertheless finds reasons for optimism.

That’s because of the courageous people like those he introduces in the book, as well as the leaders of countries like Brazil, Ecuador and Venezuela that have blocked international financial speculation and avoided the worst of the recent crisis.

In the end, “The problem is religious, and this is a religious book,” he says, with just a hint of irony. “These are matters of faith and personal courage. That’s the story I’m telling. It’s about whether we have the courage not to be slaves, toadies and greedsters.”

Palast doesn’t resolve that issue, or answer all the questions he raises in the book. But it’s riveting to read or watch – there are video episodes, by the way – as he crosses the planet in trench coat and fedora asking the right questions.

Editor’s note: From 1994-2004 Greg Guma was editor of Toward Freedom, which is sponsoring Palast’s Dec. 12 speaking engagement.

VTDigger

Occupy Vermont protestors march in front of Burlington City Hall. Photo by Greg Guma.

At least 50 people will begin the next stage of the Occupy Vermont on Friday at 3 p.m. – an ongoing occupation at City Hall Park in Burlington.

The decision was made at a local General Assembly last Sunday, and has since circulated through social networks and the Internet. Dozens of supporters have been meeting in various working groups to make sure that everything — from food and entertainment to conduct in the park — goes smoothly.

The big question is whether those participating locally in the protest against economic inequality will be able to remain in the park overnight and stay as long as they want. A local ordinance says that city parks close at night, in the case of City Hall Park at 11 p.m. But Mayor Bob Kiss hasn’t made a final decision yet about the park’s use this weekend. On Wednesday, city officials met with protest organizers.

Chapter 22 of Burlington’s Code of Ordinances says, “It shall be unlawful for any person to camp in any public park in the city unless otherwise authorized.” That includes bedding, sleeping bags, tents and any “living area,” or “use of any public park for sleeping” between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m. The usual penalty is a fine of between $50 and $500 for each day.

The city is currently reviewing “its legal obligations and requirements,” says Joe Reinert, assistant to the mayor. Among the considerations are public health and safety.

Representatives of the police, fire and parks departments say they aren’t looking for confrontation but must make sure that no one is inconvenienced.

The first concern is keeping the park public. That means making certain that the Queen City Ghost Walk and the weekly farmer’s market, which holds its last sale day of the season on Saturday, aren’t disrupted, according to deputy Burlington Police Chief Andi Higbee.

“My job is to ensure their safety as well as the safety of anybody else who might be interested in using that park,” Higbee said. But he added that the police will only enforce the curfew if forced. Many in the Occupy movement see those who sell or buy at farmers’ markets as natural allies.

“You have an interest that is potentially represented by a lot of people, and you can’t ignore that,” Reinert noted. “But our considerations are not viewpoint-based.”

The Parks and Recreation Department is looking at sanitation questions and how to stay within existing municipal ordinances. “We’re certainly concerned about fire, open flame,” says director Mari Steinbach.

Organizers expect at least 50 people to be on hand as the encampment begins. Each Sunday afternoon for the last month between 150 and 500 people have shown up at the park to march and discuss issues – from economic inequality to closing Vermont Yankee.

The Friday schedule includes art and music at 5 p.m., while Food Not Bombs and others provide free food. A General Assembly will begin at 7 p.m. Volunteer artists will construct a papier-mache Statue of Liberty to use as an occupation “mascot.” On Saturday, plans include music, dancing and discussion of “the solutions to our world problems.” A flyer circulating in Burlington asks people to bring tents, folding chairs, tarps, blankets, sleeping bags, signs, positive vibes and vision.

Jonathan Leavitt, who led anti-Lockheed organizing earlier in the year, has emerged as a local leader, giving TV interviews and talking with city officials. “It’s a really big park and the farmers market doesn’t utilize all of it,” he told WCAX earlier this week, “so we have had a lot of great conversations about how we can respect their space and utilize our rights to democratically assemble.”

VTDigger

James Carville, right, and Mary Matalin spoke at Norwich University's Todd Lecture Series. Norwich Associate Professor Jason Jagemann, left, moderated the discussion. VTD/Josh Larkin.

James Carville and Mary Matalin brought their punditry tag team to Vermont Wednesday, living up to a reputation for pungent political insight, intelligence, wisdom and wisecracks — not to mention two very divergent viewpoints.

Before a packed house at Norwich University’s Plumley Armory in Northfield as part of the Todd Lecture Series, the famed married duo took turns turning their practiced gaze on all things political: Congress and President Obama, the GOP presidential field, the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations, American history and the current climate in Washington and across the country.

Along the way, they offered humor and memorable one-liners as salty as the popcorn you’d find in a local politician’s bar, which this “Conversation with a Washington power couple,” as it was billed, had some of the flavor of, despite occasionally malfunctioning microphones and the echoing acoustics of a big hall with hundreds of people.

Take this winner on the laughometer: Carville saying he’d wished New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie had decided to enter the GOP presidential primary because then it would be a race featuring “the mount, the Mormon and the moron.” (That would be Christie, Mitt Romney and Rick Perry).

Or Matalin on the GOP’s endless search for someone who could inspire the right, which she dubbed the race between “Romney and not-Romney.” “He’s the guy your mother wanted you to go to date in high school,” she quipped.

Carville and Matalin, who married in 1993 when both were highly successful political operatives and gained fame as pundits and authors from the opposite ends of the political spectrum — he’s a liberal, she’s a conservative — are opposites in more ways than one.

Carville, lanky and tall with a shiny shaved head, drawls and slurs his words with a New Orleans growl, jumbled thoughts erupting together as if his brain were going to explode if he didn’t get them out. Matalin, bracelets hanging off her arms and immaculately coiffed, tall with long expressive hands, pauses thoughtfully and then speaks in clear, concise sentences.

While dubbed “strange bedfellows,” they also talked about what binds them together: their shared political passion and a working-class upbringing, and they showed obvious respect for each other’s insights and skills. It doesn’t hurt that they can take their shtick on the road (for a nice fee), which Carville said they do several times a month.

Sitting in three large orange arm chairs on a big dais, political science professor Jason Jagemann led the couple through the current political thicket and off into adjoining fields, which included their marriage and two surprising romps connected to Vermont.

Washington’s atmosphere

Mary Matalin. VTD/Josh Larkin

The pair both described the climate in Washington as “toxic,” which is why they moved back to New Orleans four years ago. Matalin said: “I think about this a lot… I think it’s more simple than all the talking heads… it’s obvious, and sometimes you have to state the obvious. They once asked Ray Charles what the worst thing was about being blind, and he said, ‘You can’t see.’”

The problem, she said, is that both sides don’t socialize and talk anymore, because families don’t move to Washington, and that leaves the town without the “civilizing impact of women” whose kids go to the same schools and who gather to shop or do their hair together. Everyone goes to their own parties and listens to only their own side now.

“It is no more complicated than relationships that are built on trust, that are based on respect and listening and empathy, and all those things that make you a good friend or leaders.”’

“If you’re not ever exposed to each other, it gives you the latitude to say stupid things and mean things that you would never say to each other’s face,” she said.

Matalin cited the example of Hillary Rodham Clinton and Vice President Dick Cheney, an unlikely pair she said were able to work together because of trust and mutual respect they built in their working relationship.

“The town used to be replete with them,” she said, even though people had disparate views. But no longer. “James and I would not be able to date today. We wouldn’t even be able to meet today,” she said. Back when they met, it was “know your enemy,” she said, and folks made an effort to fraternize. That’s gone now.

Carville agreed, adding as factors congressional redistricting that makes winning elections harder and our glut of information today, which he said is doing more harm than good. When he needed news growing up, he said he had four-day-old New York Times and TV anchors to listen too. Today, he said, the kids he teaches at Tulane have unbounded information, but he’s not sure they know anything more.

“Everybody uses information today like a drunk uses a lamp post: For support, not illumination,” he said.

“Everybody wants to be told how they’re validated or were right in the first place. The information is actually hurting us, because people are just using it to buttress their own particular views,” he said

As proof that two sides can always come together, Carville said his favorite example is Justin Smith Morrill of Vermont, who managed to get the Land-Grant College Act passed in 1862, establishing many of the nation’s finest universities.

“How bad was that year?” he asked, then answered his own question. “How were people not getting along? They were killing each other” in the Civil war.

But Morrill, “just through sheer persistence,” won passage of the law. “Even when you’re in times of great stress, great people do great things,” he said.

Their personal life

So how do they manage to maintain their own relationship?

James Carville. VTD/Josh Larkin

Said Carville,” I’d much rather be married to someone who thinks passionately and differently than I do than someone who doesn’t think about things.” Plus, he added, “I was 49 when we got married, and I’d made enough decisions in my life. So now I’ll be 67… and I haven’t made a decision since I was 49.”

After the laughter died down, Matalin quipped: “I don’t read his books. I haven’t read his half of the book we wrote together.”

But she said when they met, what counted for her was that he loved his family and treated his “momma” well.”

“That really was all I needed to know,” she said.

Matalin said she was attracted to him because he was turning “red states blue” all over as a Democratic operative. They met in a bar and didn’t talk polling numbers, though he did criticize her “Republican bun” hair.

“We drank a lot,” she joked. “We were young and crazy.”

“We started drinking and eating french fries, and I literally knew that night that I loved this man,” she said. She kicked out her boyfriend of seven years — while Carville left to go to Philadelphia to help beat another Republican.” That was 1991, and they got married in 1993.

The GOP presidential primary

The days of smoky back-room presidential picks and “arranged marriages” are over, and it’s going to be a long process, said Matalin. Noting she doesn’t “have a dog in this fight,” the key dynamic for the GOP is a “unitedness about beating Barack Obama.” But the GOP is struggling with finding a reliable conservative who is also electable.

The dynamic in the Republican race is it’s Romney versus not-Romney, she said. Romney’s poll ceiling is also his floor (between 23-25 percent), indicating the lack of enthusiasm. Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, Matalin said, is not as weak as it seems, and ex-businessman Herman Cain is “stronger than the mainstream press thinks.”

As for Ron Paul, she called him the “quintessential bee-sting-and-die” third-party type who is smart, has very dedicated followers but hasn’t a clue when to use “common sense.”

Carville chimed in that you have to give Paul credit for staying on message and being consistent. That said, “He just can’t get a vote.”

Her issue with the candidates is what she calls their waffling and a lack of perceived leadership, which is why Cain appears to be doing well with a simple tax plan and straight-shooting style.

In Swampville, Louisiana, if you know the capital of Vermont, you are some kind of genius.”
- James Carville

Her advice for Perry? “Embrace your inadequacy! Just say you’re the worst debater but you have the best jobs record… Make it your own and live with it: ‘I stink as a debater, but I can govern.’”

Carville said Romney’s remarkably steady poll numbers are a flat line, and he compared the GOP’s dance with Romney to a familiar high school situation. “They don’t want to go to the prom with him… they looking for anybody else.., they speed dialing, they calling around.” But, he added, “You gotta give him some points for just tenacity, because he knows it.”

Which led to this exchange:

Carville: “He’s an accommodationist technocrat … and to his credit he doesn’t really try to be much else.”

Matalin, emphatically: “That’s his problem. Just be what you are. Whatever an accommodationist technocrat is, embrace your accommodationist technocratism, whatever that is.”

Carville, shouting to laughter: “He has a 59-point plan! How do you have a 59-point plan? How do you come up with that number?”

President Obama

Despite the weaknesses of the GOP field, Obama has a rough road, they both said, citing a raft of poll and other numbers.

“If he wins the election, it will be a very stunning accomplishment,” said Carville, citing high unemployment and low consumer confidence figures that usually don’t bode well.

But polls for Congress are lower than Obama’s, and he said the election is still a long way off. “You look at the climate out there, it’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen in my political life,” he said, adding that he wouldn’t be surprised if someone still jumped in to stir up the race, even as a third party.

Matalin said presidential elections are always a “referendum on the presidency” but didn’t discount a third-party entry either, noting that while Republicans and Democrats wouldn’t welcome a third-party candidate, polls show 70 percent of independents say they would.

As Carville colorfully put it,” There’s a lot of itching out there. How much scratchin’ gets done between now and next election, I’m not sure,” he said.

America’s Future

Matilin and Carville spoke as part of Norwich University's Todd Lecture Series. Approximately 900 people attended the event. VTD/Josh Larkin

“I think that the country I grew up in is a fundamentally different country now, and I think we’re in real danger of losing the middle class, and I just think the very essence of who we are depends on how we maintain that,” Carville said. As an example of how much things have changed, he noted he was able to go to LSU law school practically on money pulled out of his pocket, $95 a semester.

Carville called “young people” the country’s biggest asset. “We have terrific young people, and I see it every day.” He said they fuel his sense of long-term optimism despite worries about the short term.

Matalin, too, sees a critical time ahead. “We are at a crossroads — this is not a talking point. We are in transition from a country that was, to the country that we want it to be,” she said. She said the time for “cutting the baby in half” to make a deal is over, and fundamental changes are needed.

“Measuring accountability and transparency, so many things at the federal level are never measured… everybody is equally guilty of this,” she said, adding that the same problem exists in the private sector. “The free market can’t work if it’s opaque,” she said.

Political Campaigns

While we’ve made huge technological advances – Matalin recalled excitement at once being able to flash-fax 120 people, yet now millions are on email beck and call — we’ve lost the art of the simple message and leadership, she said.

“People are sick of inauthenticity — like John Edwards: You want authenticity? I can fake that,” she said.

She said we’re unfortunately stuck with presidential campaigns that are long and extended: “There is a permanent campaign because it’s become an industry,” she said, suggesting folks just tune it out.

Matalin had scorn for the leadership that has taken over the Tea Party, saying “The dumber you are, the easier it is to get on TV.”

I think Bernie Sanders is the kind of politician that Jamie and I love. He doesn’t shrink from what he is. But don’t put me down as a supporter of Bernie Sanders.”
- Mary Matilin

Added Carville, “What you communicate is always the single most important thing.” Carville added: “Be leery of the big idea. Usually the experience is that that gets you in a lot of trouble.”

He went back to the Bible to describe one of the most famous sound bites, arguing sound bites work and something simple can be catchy and powerful: “Do onto others as you would have them do unto you. A four-second sound bite. There hasn’t been another thought on human relations since then. That’s as simple as it can be, but its probably the most profound utterance ever,” he said, drawing perhaps the evening’s loudest applause.

Loose Ends

Carville and Matalin in a private interview said they thought Vermont had a good congressional delegation. Matalin had praise for Sen. Bernie Sanders, despite Sanders’ leftist political leanings.

“I think Bernie Sanders is the kind of politician that Jamie and I love. He doesn’t shrink from what he is,” she said, then added wryly: “But don’t put me down as a supporter of Bernie Sanders.”

Carville, on his comic zingers and one-liners, said some just come to him and he has help with others. “I’m a big believer that the mark of a successful appearance is if I can give people three things to laugh about, I’ve succeeded. He likes giving talks, he says, which aren’t exactly a rough life: “It ain’t bein’ a riveter.”

Carville said in his talk that Montpelier, Vt., played a big role in his early life helping his mother sell educational materials in Louisiana — “she was such a good salesman.”

She would drag him along, and to impress in her sales pitch, they picked the “most arcane-sounding” place they could think of to ask for a question. So she would ask him what the capital of Vermont was. When he replied Montpelier, “People were just blown away,” and it would help seal the deal.

“In Swampville, Louisiana, if you know the capital of Vermont, you are some kind of genius,” he said.

“Our biggest seller was the capital of Vermont. We closed more sales with Montpelier than anything else.”

Carville praised Vermont’s beauty, saying, “I hope you understand what a beautiful part of the world you live in.” But he said to laughter he did find one thing strange: “We come from New Orleans, and it was sort of odd to have people complain about the hurricanes in Vermont. It’s the topsy-turvy world we live in. “

VTDigger

Stockxchng image

Editor’s note: This story is by Callum Borchers and Stephen Kurkjian of the Northeastern University Initiative for Investigative Reporting.

Read the related story: Brattleboro a “wedding destination” for fraudulent marriages

It is a felony under federal law. Yet every year thousands of American citizens participate in sham marriages with illegal immigrants in exchange for thousands of dollars, and they do so without fear because there is virtually no risk of detection or punishment.

All they need do is sign some papers, pose for phony wedding pictures and assure an overworked immigration interviewer the marriage is genuine — when in fact it is an unlawful way for illegal immigrants to become lawful U.S. residents.

On the rare occasions the marriages are exposed as shams, American citizens rarely face consequences, even as their foreign spouses are deported.

By some government estimates, as many as 60,000 of the 200,000 or so marriages by which illegal immigrants, or those on temporary visas, become lawful permanent residents and secure green cards are fraudulent.

To be sure, an estimated 40,000 applicants are rejected out of hand for simple lack of proper documentation. Yet, of the 200,000 approved applications, the government investigates less than 1 percent for possible fraud. Even fewer petitions lead to criminal prosecutions of U.S. citizens, who conceivably could face five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

“The ringleaders tell people, ‘You probably won’t get caught, and if you do, all that’s going to happen is they’ll sort of wag their finger at you,’” said Dan Lane, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) investigator who in July broke up a large fraud ring involving 39 sham marriages in Sacramento. “Unfortunately, in some jurisdictions that’s the case.”

The legal double standard has existed for decades. At a Senate subcommittee hearing in 1985, Alan C. Nelson, director of what was then the Immigration and Naturalization Service, chided the government for expelling immigrants who engage in phony marriages while giving their citizen accomplices a pass.

A principal reason for the poor oversight is a lack of money.”

In at least one way, the unequal treatment is formalized by law. While criminal prosecution of U.S. citizens is subject to a five-year statute of limitations, starting from the date of the marriage, deportation proceedings against immigrants can take place at any time.

“If someone becomes a naturalized citizen by some sort of fraud perpetrated against the government, they can always be de-naturalized,” said Christopher S. Bentley, spokesman for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). “It’s not an easy process, but at that point, they could be deported.”

There are exceptions to the practice of granting clemency to Americans. In one recent case, in Maine, federal prosecutors targeted the complicit U.S. citizens, as well as the illegal immigrants.

A total of 11 Americans were indicted in a scheme that paired about three dozen Ugandans and Kenyans with an equal number of Maine residents, most of whom were family and friends of a Sabattus woman and her mother and sister. The orchestrator, 38-year-old Uganda native Rashid Kakande, was sentenced in June to two years in prison and fined $20,000.

Despite the uncommonly aggressive prosecution, the Maine case nevertheless exposes cracks in the fraud prevention system. It was not the official interviews by USCIS that detected Kakande’s habitual fraud — instead, it was two anonymous tipsters who alerted investigators to the scheme.

Government auditors have long complained that there are numerous barriers to effective marriage fraud enforcement, which block cases from ever reaching a U.S. attorney’s desk. A principal reason for the poor oversight is a lack of money. While the Department of Homeland Security spent $6.3 billion on border security in fiscal year 2011, it devoted only $39.2 million to fighting immigration fraud of all varieties.

The same officers who determine whether a marriage-based green card application is fraudulent also must handle national security background checks and other high-priority functions that relegate fraud to the Homeland Security back burner.”

In addition, the process of initiating fraud investigations is cumbersome, according to a report by Homeland Security’s Office of the Inspector General. A suspicion that a marriage is fraudulent must be vetted at four levels — two at USCIS, two at ICE — before it is fully investigated. Even then, a U.S. attorney may decide not to prosecute.

USCIS interviewers, the first line of defense against fraud, have little incentive to request investigations, the inspector general found in its 2008 review. Graded by their efficiency in processing immigration petitions, many interviewers are reluctant to fill out time-consuming fraud referral forms, unless the deceptions are obvious, the inspector general concluded.

Another impediment to more rigorous review of the marriages, the inspector general’s audit found, was the overall caseload for the government interviewers. The same officers who determine whether a marriage-based green card application is fraudulent also must handle national security background checks and other high-priority functions that relegate fraud to the Homeland Security back burner.

Spokespersons in Boston and Washington for the two federal agencies that review the marriage applications and investigate the allegedly fraudulent ones declined comment on what changes had been made in the process since the 2008 Inspector General’s report. They also declined to provide statistics on the number of such marriage applications that have been approved in Massachusetts and other New England states, how many were rejected and how many were investigated for fraud.

A spokeswoman for U.S. Attorney Carmen M. Ortiz also declined to discuss the equity of allowing those Americans who might be involved in fraudulent marriages to escape prosecution while the immigrants are deported. But it has been this way for many years, according to David North, a fellow at the non-partisan Center for Immigration Studies. North testified at the1985 Senate hearing, where he said the government “should try to get pictures of U.S. citizens on film going to jail for their part in conspiratorial marriage frauds.”

Looking back at his unheeded suggestion, North offered an exasperated reaction: “Believe me, I’m frustrated,” he said in a recent interview.

Lane, the ICE investigator, said he knows U.S. attorneys, with limited resources, have to prioritize their caseloads. While Americans who trade wedding vows for cash may not seem like important targets, he said, they could threaten national security by marrying terrorists.

Plus, he noted, there’s the principle of equal justice.

“It wouldn’t be fair to leave people hanging out there who were involved in these sham marriages,” while their immigrant spouses are deported, Lane said.

This article was prepared by the Initiative for Investigative Reporting in the School of Journalism at Northeastern University in Boston. The Initiative is supported by a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The Initiative’s website is: www.northeastern.edu/watchdognewengland.

Callum Borchers email is callum.borchers@gmail.com. Stephen Kurkjian’s email is stephenkurkjian@gmail.com.

VTDigger

Brattleboro town clerk Annette L. Cappy in her office. MICHAEL MOORE / Keene Sentinel Staff

Editor’s note: This story is by Stephen Kurkjian and Callum Borchers of the Northeastern University Initiative for Investigative Reporting.

Read the related story: Sham green card marriages easy to arrange in the United States

BRATTLEBORO — The town clerk’s office here, which issues hundreds of marriage certificates a year, is accustomed to awkward young couples. But starting in mid-2005, the clerk began to notice something out of the ordinary among a dozen or so couples who began arriving to obtain licenses.

“They showed no signs of affection,” said Annette Cappy, Brattleboro’s Town Clerk. “Often it was as if they didn’t know each other.”

In some cases, Cappy recalled, the prospective brides and grooms didn’t speak the same language.

Typically, one partner was Brazilian and here in this country illegally, and the other Puerto Rican and therefore, an American citizen. And they were accompanied by a middle-aged woman who knew the marriages would entitle the Brazilian brides and grooms to green cards and then status as “lawful permanent residents.”

Last February, Maria-Helena Knoller, a Brazilian-born Holyoke resident, pleaded guilty to federal charges of marriage fraud, and concealing and shielding illegal aliens. As outlined by the five-page indictment in US District Court in Springfield, Knoller operated one of the country’s largest criminal conspiracies aimed at gaining legal status for illegals by arranging sham marriages with American citizens.

“Even when documentation is asked for, to show that the couple is living together, it’s easily doctored. There’s just too many applications and too few immigration officers handling these cases. – David Seminara, a former US consular officer”

The 59-year old Knoller pleaded guilty to arranging 32 fraudulent marriages, though the actual number was likely much higher. Federal investigators found evidence in a raid on Knoller’s home that the number might be more than twice that.

In Brattleboro alone, Cappy reported her suspicions about many more marriages. And federal agents found evidence she had more in the planning stages: Their search turned up 61 gold wedding bands.

Knoller’s was a full-service enterprise. After the illegals obtained legal status, she helped facilitate the divorces for many.

The Knoller case has received scant public attention. An investigation by the Initiative for Investigative Reporting, however, found evidence that the Knoller case may be a rare exception, one of the few such scams actually uncovered and prosecuted.

Among the findings:

• U.S. government efforts to monitor such marriages are ineffectual, according to government auditors. Each year, about 200,000 immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally or on a temporary basis obtain green cards by marrying American citizens. By some estimates, up to 60,000 of those marriages are fraudulent.
• The American citizens who are paid to make the scams possible rarely face any sanctions. In the Knoller case, not one of the 32 American spouses was prosecuted, while all of the illegals now face deportation.
• Brattleboro as a “destination wedding” site may have been by design: The state’s laws for obtaining a marriage license are the most lax in New England. Town clerks are not required to ask for identification, and seldom do. Massachusetts, and every other state bordering it, requires proof of identity.
• Cappy, the town clerk, notified federal authorities numerous times about the suspicious couples and their wedding planner. Yet it took three years for federal agents to bring a halt to Knoller’s wedding bonanza.Of the 32 marriages for which Knoller was prosecuted, 22 were legalized by the Brattleboro-issued licenses. But other marriage licenses were granted in Hartford and New Britain, Conn., and Chicopee, Amherst and Framingham, Mass. In each case, the Brazilian illegals paid Knoller as much as $12,000. Typically, the American spouses received half the money.

To government officials who have studied the problem, the forces arrayed against wedding scammers are hopelessly outmatched.

“The process of weeding out the fraudulent (marriages) — those arranged solely to obtain the alien a work permit and Green Card — is nearly impossible,” said David Seminara, a former US consular officer who authored a 2008 study that faulted the process of identifying fraud in immigration petitions filed domestically and overseas. “Even when documentation is asked for, to show that the couple is living together, it’s easily doctored. There’s just too many applications and too few immigration officers handling these cases.”

In the Knoller case, all of the illegals obtained “work permits” that allowed them to claim legal residency in the United States after filing their necessary paperwork and a copy of their marriage certificates with the US Citizenship and Immigration Services. Three months later, following an interview with a CIS agent in either Boston or Lawrence, they were granted provisional green cards. Those provisional cards allowed them to travel back and forth to Brazil unchallenged. And after two years of marriage, they were granted permanent green cards.

After that, Knoller offered her clients help in legally dissolving the marriages, once the sham was no longer needed. Divorce actions for half the 32 marriages have been filed or granted in Massachusetts alone, according to records made available by the Massachusetts Family and Probate Court. It is not known whether Knoller assisted in those filings.

Maria-Helena Knoller, a Brazilian-born Holyoke resident, pleaded guilty to federal charges of marriage fraud, and concealing and shielding illegal aliens.

The sought-after green cards became worthless after Knoller’s scheme was uncovered. All of the illegal spouses received visits from federal agents telling them they face deportation, according to immigration lawyers representing the targets.

The Knoller case, according to interviews by reporters for the Initiative, has underscored many of the inefficiencies and inequities in the government program that grants green cards and permanent residency to immigrants who marry Americans.

According to independent auditors, the program is so hobbled by a lack of resources and firm standards that the federal government is left ill-equipped to identify fraudulent marriages. Yet every year, about 200,000 immigrants who are in the United States illegally or on a temporary basis gain their Green Cards by marrying American citizens.

Principal among the system’s inequities is the double standard when fraud is discovered. As illustrated in the Knoller case, the illegal immigrants who paid $12,000 for having the fake marriages arranged are facing deportation. Although federal law allows for prosecution of American citizens for engaging in fraudulent marriages aimed at evading US immigration laws, none of the Knoller-arranged spouses face any legal consequences.

Christina DiIorio-Sterling, spokeswoman for US Attorney for Massachusetts Carmen M. Ortiz, declined comment. However, federal officials have defended the decision not to prosecute Americans in such cases, saying they do not have the resources to do so.

In Knoller’s case, that lack of resources helps explain why Knoller’s flagrant scam went on for so long.

Knoller, as it turned out, was well-positioned to take advantage of the program that provides green cards and legal permanent resident federal status to those who marry American citizens. Like most of the other 72,000 Brazilian natives in Massachusetts, she left Brazil for economic reasons. She moved with her German-born husband to western Massachusetts in 1990 and quickly set up a housecleaning business.

Every year, about 200,000 immigrants who are in the United States illegally or on a temporary basis gain their Green Cards by marrying American citizens.”

Knoller herself appears to have been in the United States legally, since both her first and second husbands were in the United States legally, and she gained lawful residency status through them.

About a decade ago, Knoller, who has a college degree in Brazil, went to work for Springfield lawyer Kevin R. Murphy, whose practice includes immigration law.

Last week, Murphy said Knoller worked for him before 2005, the year she started arranging marriages, and he denied that any of the Brazilians cited in her 2011 guilty plea had met her while he employed her.

Knoller declined comment when approached recently. Her defense counsel said she would have no comment at least until after her sentencing, which is scheduled next month.

Herbert Knoller, her former husband from whom she had a bitter divorce in the late 1990s, said in an interview that his ex-wife decided in 2004 or 2005 to start arranging marriages, thanks to the expertise she gained in Murphy’s office.
Her ties in the Brazilian community served her well in finding clients, for the most part men and women who had come to the United States years ago on tourist visas and illegally remained.

Asked why such people would pay thousands of dollars to break the law, Natalicia Tracy, executive director of the Brazilian Immigrant Center in Boston, said: “I can tell you the people who come here are very vulnerable and very naïve….If you tell them, ‘This is something you can do to stay,’ they’re going to do it because even working 60, 80 hours a week here is better than what they came from in Brazil.”

It was almost as easy to find Americans willing to engage in the conspiracy in return for about $6,000. Both Springfield and Holyoke have large Puerto Rican populations, and, according to former friends and family members, Knoller often invited individuals from both ethnic groups to parties at her Holyoke home.

To all the prospective American spouses, the pitch was the same: Knoller would fill out the paperwork and provide a translator to help answer all questions, according to interviews and documents issued by the US attorney’s office. All they had to do was show up for the marriage ceremony and then a few months later tell an immigration interviewer a story of love and marriage. In exchange, the conspirators received half their payments, usually $3,000, when the marriage license was granted and the second half, another $3,000, when the provisional green card was issued. Knoller assured the Americans they did not have to live with the spouses and that, after two years of blissless marriage, she could facilitate their divorce filings.

To ensure that an early divorce did not jeopardize the permanent green cards, Knoller had on call a licensed mental health professional who could certify why problems in a marriage, like spousal abuse, would qualify for an exemption from the two-year requirement.

According to one individual familiar with Knoller’s operation, one Puerto Rican woman who agreed to participate used the money to pay for her tuition at Holyoke Community College. Another used it to buy a car, a third for a down-payment on a restaurant in Holyoke.

The business also brought Knoller financial success. In 2006, a year after she began her operation, Knoller and her second husband put down $57,000 in cash and borrowed $228,000 from a bank to buy a single-family home in Holyoke. When federal agents raided the property two years later, they seized more than $117,000 in cash.

It remains uncertain why Knoller chose Bratteboro for the bulk of the marriage licenses. However, it may have something to do with Vermont’s relaxed laws governing the licenses: No waiting period is required, nor do the applicants need to show any proof of their identities or where they live. In Massachusetts, for instance, there is a three-day waiting period before the license can be issued.

Whatever the reason, the couples’ didn’t look relaxed – or happy – when they began showing up at the front desk of the Brattleboro Town Clerk’s office in June 2005. “We were suspicious right almost from the beginning,” said Brattleboro Town Clerk Cappy. “A lot of them didn’t even speak the same language. If they didn’t have her, I doubt, they’d have known what to do.”

Because of her suspicions, she decided in September, 2005 to alert USCIS’s field office in St. Albans. Cappy wrote that while her office was accustomed to issuing marriage licenses to couples from out of state or even foreign countries, she said in her letter, “the recent rush of Brazilians eager to be married in Vermont seems to be quite an extraordinary coincidence and has caught our attention.”

On June 5, 2008, federal agents raided Knoller's home where they found $117,030 in cash and a plastic bag filled with 61 gold wedding bands.

In addition, Cappy wrote that a woman named “Maria” often accompanied the couples, acting as their translator and guide in gaining the marriage licenses. She also included copies of the dozen permits she had already issued.

Over the next three years, Cappy sent several more letters to the USCIS office – keeping the immigration office updated on Knoller’s continued stream of visits to the office.

Whether Cappy’s letters or a request for an investigation that a former family friend says was made to the FBI office in Springfield in 2007 triggered the probe into Knoller’s activities could not be determined. Both Chuck Jackson, spokesman for the US Office for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and DiIorio-Sterling, spokeswoman for US attorney’s office in Boston, declined to say what sparked the Knoller criminal investigation.

One thing is certain – that the subsequent interviews that the couples had with USCIS to complete their process for the granting of Green Cards continued without interruption. The only thing that stopped them – in fact, Knoller’s entire operation – was a raid by federal agents at her house on George Frost road in Holyoke on June 5, 2008.

While Knoller, her daughter, Natalie and second husband waited on the porch outside, the agents combed through the house looking for evidence of her business activities. In addition to the $117,030, the agents took two computers, various documents and a plastic bag filled with 61 gold wedding bands from the residence.

Last February, two and a half years after the raid, Knoller appeared before US District Judge Michael A. Ponsor in Springfield to plead guilty to the charges that she had operated an illegal marriage scheme to evade US immigration laws. Knoller, who is now free on bail and working at a donut shop, is scheduled to appear before Judge Ponsor in October for sentencing. She faces up to 10 years in prison as well as forfeiture of her Holyoke home and two other rental properties she owns in Chicopee – and deportation back to Brazil.

At her guilty plea in February, Assistant U.S. Attorney Kevin O’Regan told Ponsor that in addition to the cash and stash of wedding bands, federal agents also found a ledger that appeared to list more than 70 couples and the details of their nuptials.

“Ms. Knoller would instruct them what to wear, how to act – and arrange for wedding photos to be taken” that they could then present to immigration officials. “This really was one-stop shopping for fraudulent marriages,” O’Regan said.

This article was prepared by the Initiative for Investigative Reporting in the School of Journalism at Northeastern University in Boston. The Initiative is supported by a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The Initiative’s website is: www.northeastern.edu/watchdognewengland.

Stephen Kurkjian’s email is stephenkurkjian@gmail.com.

Rachel Zarrell and Gal Tziperman Lotan, also of the Initiative for Investigative Reporting, contributed to this report.

VTDigger

Perhaps like many Vermonters, I approached last week’s anniversary of the 9/11 tragedy with a conflicted sense of emotion. There was an obligation to remember the day and honor those killed, but there was also a gnawing sense that I wanted to just forget. Perhaps I wouldn’t even turn on television and listen to the long list of victims’ names being read in alphabetical order (I’m always stunned by just how many people surnamed “Clark” met the same fate).

Then just a few days before the 10th anniversary, VPR reached back into its library and ran the decade-old audio of the Vermont congressional delegation’s reactions. I heard Jim Jeffords’ voice detailing, with emotion, the unimaginable scope of destruction. And I immediately went to my attic to find the box.

The box contained all the newspaper accounts of that day, which happened to be the first day of my new job as press secretary in Senator Jeffords’ Capitol Hill office. We had watched that morning as CNN reported that a plane had hit the World Trade Center, and I continued to make the rounds of introductions. An hour or so later, the shouts of Capitol Police were ordering us to evacuate. It was shortly after the Pentagon had been hit, and only later did we learn of the fourth plane. I still see the sharpshooters ringing the roof of the US Capitol as we fled.

At the bottom of the box in the attic was the black briefing book that detailed our Sept. 18, 2001, tour of Ground Zero. We took the 7:25 a.m. Acela train from Washington’s Union Station, just Jeffords and a few staffers. We were all rather solemn, quieted by the anxiety of what we knew we would soon witness. We played Hearts to pass the time before we arrived at Penn Station shortly after 10 a.m.

Jim was then chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, which had jurisdiction over FEMA. We were there to witness FEMA’s response, but we would see much more. At Penn Station we were hustled to a waiting caravan that took us, with sirens sounding, to a command center at Pier 90. I wondered why they needed to use sirens when there was so little traffic in downtown Manhattan. It was an early lesson in riding along with a U.S. Senator.

A police boat took us from FEMA’s command center to the piers near Ground Zero, where we were met by Mayor Giuliani and a host of FEMA officials. Stepping from the boat, I was overwhelmed by the smell, a putrid mix of everything that had burned – computers, buildings, flesh. We were handed pink industrial respirators as we stepped through the deep piles of ash that coated the ground, rendering everything gray. Firefighters who were working the site sat in exhaustion and disbelief; Giuliani repeatedly embraced those who openly wept. IDs were checked.

There was really no need for the mayor to use maps to show us the scope of destruction. It loomed in front of us. I had been to the WTC many times, having grown up not far from the site, but suddenly there were no bearings without the towers in the skyline. Building facades were either burnt or blown out while we were still blocks away.

A fellow staffer took my picture that day, and I distinctly remember instructing myself not to smile, as one is reflexively prone to do. The picture captures an odd, crooked look on my face that speaks to the incredulous sentiment I felt that day. We departed Penn Station on Metroliner #121, at 4 p.m., arriving back in Washington three hours later.

As the 10th anniversary ceremonies began at Ground Zero last Sunday morning, I did turn on my television, prompted by the memories contained in that box in the attic. I wept as the names were again read, and found myself still stunned that there were so many Clarks among the dead.

It seemed the family members had been reading the names for a good long while, but we were only up to the Cs.

Sen. Jim Jeffords meets Rudolph Guiliani in the week following Sept. 11, 2001.

VTDigger

Sen. Bernie Sanders, right, and Jim Coutts, director of the Franklin County Senior Center speaking on Thursday. VTD/Anne Galloway

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., will propose legislation to protect the Social Security Trust Fund from cuts and ensure the long-term viability of the fund, which provides cash benefits to seniors, orphans and disabled Americans.

Sanders is pushing for an expansion of the 6.2 percent payroll tax to include earned income that exceeds $250,000 per year. Sanders also wants Congress to hold the fund harmless as it develops deficit reduction proposals.

The senator, flanked by advocates for seniors and disabled Vermonters, told reporters at his Burlington office on Thursday that he will do “everything in his power” to protect Social Security from cuts by the congressional “super committee” charged with developing deficit reduction proposals.

Social Security is funded by a separate payroll tax that is not lumped in with the nation’s gross tax receipts, Sanders said, and it has not contributed “one nickel” to the nation’s $14 trillion deficit.

“We are here today to send a loud and clear message to this super committee: Do not cut Social Security,” Sanders said. “In my view, it’s a promise made to Vermonters, made to Americans, that when you’re old, when you’re disabled or if you’re a child and you lose your parents, you will not live in abject poverty.”

The senator said 94 percent of Americans contribute to Social Security through the 6.2 percent payroll tax on all of their wages, while the wealthy, the remaining 6 percent, pay the tax on a small percentage of their total income. When Congress reconvenes after Labor Day, Sanders will introduce a bill to lift the $106,800 cap and apply the payroll tax on all earned income above $250,000 a year.

The proposal would shore up the benefits program for decades to come, Sanders said. The system, however, is not in crisis. Social Security is currently running a $2.3 trillion surplus, the senator said.

Deputy Director of the Vermont Center for Independent Living Janet Dermody. VTD/Anne Galloway

The Congressional Budget Office issued a report recently that shows the fund will be exhausted in 2038, Sanders said, at which time the Social Security, based on projected payroll receipts, would be on schedule to make 81 percent of its current benefit outlays to seniors, orphans and disabled Americans.

His payroll tax proposal would ensure that Social Security pays out 100 percent of benefits and is sustainable for, as he put it, “another 75 years.”

Sanders said he couldn’t take credit for the idea – it was originally floated in 2008, during President Barack Obama’s campaign. At the time, Obama said it wasn’t fair for “Warren Buffet to pay a fraction of his income in payroll tax, whereas the majority … pays payroll tax on 100 percent of their income.”

Sanders’ will introduce his bill in a more hostile context. The proposal runs counter to growing pressure from the GOP majority in the House of Representatives to cut entitlement benefits. Republicans, and some Democrats, are looking to resolve the deficit crisis by dipping into Social Security, Sanders suggested. The congressional “super committee” is likely to propose significant cuts to Social Security as it examines options for reducing the national deficit by $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years, he said.

“We have to deal with that (the deficit), but Social Security hasn’t contributed one penny to the national debt;  it’s funded by the payroll tax,” Sanders said.

When Congress returns to Capitol Hill after Labor Day, the Senate and House will take up the budget and the deficit. The so-called “super committee,” made up of six Democrats and six Republicans, is charged with evaluating expenditures for all government programs and services. “Everything,” including the Department of Defense, Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security, is “on the table,” according to Sanders.

Congressional Republicans are currently considering a proposal known as the “chained CPI” that would result in an annual cost of living decrease for seniors. Americans who reach 75 years of age would see benefits go down $560 per year, while those who are 85 and older would see an annual decrease of $1,000 per year. Other possible benefit reduction proposals include moving the retirement age from 65 to 68 or 70.

This “alternate form of inflation,” as The Hill, a Washington blog, puts it, is meant to lead to a “slower increase in Social Security benefits.”

Sanders has another term for it – “unconscionable.”

“Imagine someone trying to get by on $16,000 a year,” Sanders said. “They’re old, they’re sick and they have medical bills, and they’re getting $1,000 less. That to me is not what America is supposed to be about.”

Sanders said that cuts to the benefits program for seniors, orphans and disabled Americans will drive more people into poverty and hurt the state’s economy. Before Social Security was enacted 76 years ago, 50 percent of seniors lived in poverty, Sanders said. The rate is now 10 percent.

Social Security is also a significant part of the economy. More than 120,000 Vermonters receive about $1.5 billion in benefits each year, or about 6 percent of the state’s annual gross domestic product, according to Sanders.

“This is not just about making sure people live with dignity, it’s also about the economy,” Sanders said.

VTDigger

Bill McKibben. Photo courtesy of Bill McKibben

The ‘sit-in’ protests in Washington D.C. resulting in the arrest of environmentalist author William McKibben, Vermont Law School professor Gus Speth and roughly 150 others, are scheduled to continue every day from now until Sept. 3. About 30 more Vermonters have banded together and are slated to go down Sunday.

McKibben, author of the seminal book about climate change, End of Nature, is also the founder of the activist group Tar Sands Action, and Speth, a Vermont Law School environmental lawyer and activist, were arrested and held over the weekend for protesting against a permit for a $7 billion pipeline that would run from Alberta Canada to the eastern part of Texas. They were released Monday afternoon.

Because the pipeline crosses international boundaries, it was originally up to the State Department to decide whether to approve the project, but due to disagreements between the Environmental Protection Agency and the State Department, President Obama is the one who signs or rejects the permit. Activists are participating in the sit-in to let the president know he should reject the permit, and people are coming from all corners of the country to join. Climate scientist and director of NASA’s Goddard Institute James Hansen described the tar sands oil extraction development as a game-over proposition for climate change in an interview with the Huffington Post Sunday.

After the first round of arrests, authorities held roughly 65 protesters much longer than expected. According to Kathryn Blume, an organizer of 350 Vermont– an environmental activist group – the usual penalty for civil disobedience is a $100 fine and you can be on your way; this was not the case for McKibben and Speth.

“They held McKibben and others over the weekend because they wanted to do it as a deterrent to prevent other people to come,” Blume said.

Blume and others are not dissuaded. Protests happened in similar manners both Sunday and Monday,  resulting in roughly 100 people arrested since the original 65 on Saturday, and Blume is heading down with at least 25 to 30 Vermonters on Sunday to have sit-in on Tuesday.

Blume said they have arranged for a bus, which still has open seats, to travel down to Washington on Sunday. The protesters will have civil disobedience training on Monday to go over how the process works.

“I don’t know exactly what the training will be, but I suspect they are going to go over the procedure of being arrested,” Blume said. “Even though it’s a cause you believe in, getting arrested is outside most peoples’ comfort zone.”

The participants will then go to the White House on Tuesday and position themselves in a place to be considered trespassing. According to Blume, the police will then come and give three warnings, at the end of which the protesters will be arrested. Blume said most people will pay the $100 fine so they can get back to their regular lives;  the bus will return Wednesday evening.

Activists have been readying to have the sit-in for some time as a letter inviting all to come to participate was sent in the end of June. The beginning of the letter states:  “The short version (of this letter) is we want you to consider doing something hard: coming to Washington in the hottest and stickiest weeks of the summer and engaging in civil disobedience that will quite possibly get you arrested.”

Many of the people who sent out the invitation also sent a letter  to the president asking him to reject the permit on Aug.  3. The environmental activists wrote: “The tar sands are a huge pool of carbon, but one that does not make sense to exploit. It takes a lot of energy to extract and refine this resource into usable fuel, and the mining is environmentally destructive.”

Joe Solomon, another organizer of 350,  wrote the following in an email:

“I’ve been thinking a lot about why Vermonters are making this trip, and keep coming back to this thought: It’s fair to say the Keystone XL is currently the greatest threat to Vermont’s climate future. We can debate how much oil the pipeline will spill onto America’s heartland, but we can guarantee it will spill a massive amount of carbon into the atmosphere. And all that extra carbon will affect us: hotter summers, worse floods, out-of-whack farms, shrinking ski seasons, and on and on with the growing effects of climate change. So, we’re going down to join Nebraskans and Native Americans and stand with the heartland, but just as much to protect the future for all of us here in the Green Mountain State.”

The pipeline is owned by TransCanada Corp..  Although there has been no construction,  the pipeline is to pump raw oil — extracted from tar sand fields out of Alberta — all the way to Texas. Although the oil companies have cited studies showing tar-sand oil is no more corrosive than regular oil, environmentalists claim the tar sand is much cruder.

According to Josh Fox, Oscar-nominated director of the film Gasland, the biggest industrial development project ever is happening in the tar-sand fields of Alberta and is the size of Florida. In a short film made about the project, Fox said it is the biggest capital investment and largest energy project in the world. He also said the tar sands produce 36 million tons of carbon dioxide a day and is the cause of as much green house gases a day as 1.3 million cars.

“Oil companies have invested $120 billion in tar sands development,” Fox said in his film.

TransCanada has pressed for Obama to sign the permit as it offers approximately 20,000 new jobs for the economy. The president has until Oct. 1, to sign or reject the permit,  and Blume said the decision will be colossal.

“This is an opportunity and a profound decision and will have a monumental change on the future,” Blume said. “A woman turned to her daughter while a group was being arrested (at the protest) and said ‘this is what democracy looks like.’”

Released from prison

According to a Twitter tweet from TarSandsAction, the protesters jailed Saturday and held through the weekend were released at roughly 4 p.m. Monday. Upon release, McKibben was quoted saying:  “I’m so glad more people are getting arrested. We aren’t deterred.”

While in prison, both McKibben and Speth released statements – Speth wrote the following statement through his wife:

“We the prisoners being held in the Central Cell Block of the D.C. Jail need company and encourage the continuation of the protests against the tar sands pipeline. Help us stop this disastrous proposal! I’ve held numerous positions and public office in Washington but my current position feels like one of the most important.” – Gus Speth

McKibben sent the following through the Tar Sand Action legal team:

“Hello everyone! We don’t need sympathy, we need company. It’s clear to us that police were hoping to deter this action, and it’s equally clear to us the opposite will be the result. I’m looking forward to seeing everybody over the next 2 weeks. It has been a little hot here in central cell block, but not as hot as it will be if we don’t stop this project. People here have been in good spirits, and there has been a great deal of learning. We are thinking ahead to this weekend to share stories about Dr King and freedom movement. Even though uncomfortable, this experience has given us a greater sense of that part of history. Come on in, the water is fine.”

VTDigger

Brian Bill in his 2001 yearbook Norwich University yearbook photo. Bill was killed on Saturday when the CH-47 Chinook helicopter he was riding in was shot down over the Wardak province of Afghanistan after a mission. VTD/Taylor Dobbs

Norwich University today announced that one of its graduates, Brian Bill, was aboard the CH-47 Chinook helicopter shot down over the Wardak province of Afghanistan on Saturday morning. Bill graduated from the Northfield college in 2001 with an electrical engineering degree.

“We are proud that Norwich produces the men and women of character like Brian that want to be great warriors for this nation,” said Michael Kelley, vice president for student affairs at the university.

Bill was a skier and triathlete, and he aspired to be an astronaut, according to the Hartford Courant. He graduated from Trinity Catholic High in Stamford, Conn.

Bill was one of 22 Navy SEALs aboard the helicopter who were members of SEAL Team 6. The unit was responsible for the death of Osama bin Laden in May. According to news reports, the SEALs who died in the downed Chinook were not directly involved in the bin Laden operation.

The SEALs, among the nation’s most highly trained soldiers, were formed in the early 1980s. The secretive group of military operatives has most recently been involved in special missions in Afghanistan, Yemen and Somalia. They splashed onto Vermont headlines in 2009 when SEAL snipers simultaneously shot and killed three Somali pirates who held hostage Underhill resident Richard Phillips hostage, the captain of the Maersk Alabama, that was overtaken by the pirates in the Arabian Sea.

Kelley spoke about the rigors of Navy SEAL training and the “intellectual horsepower” required to become part of the Navy’s elite special forces unit. There are other Norwich graduates in the special forces branches of the Army, Navy, and Air Force, Kelley said.

“It’s not just brawn,” he said, “these men are extraordinarily gifted men who know full well what they’re (getting) into.”

Since 2004, Kelley said, six other members of the Norwich community had been killed either in training exercises in preparation for deployment or on the battlefield. He said there were plans for a memorial service in the university’s chapel for Bill once students return for the fall semester.

Kelley said Norwich students would be saddened by the news, but that it would likely “sharpen their resolve to continue in their training in order that they may serve as they desire.”

“When we look at our graduates on graduation day,” he said, “they know full well – as do we – that many of them will be in harm’s way in a very short period of time after their graduation.”

The remains of all American service members killed in the attack are scheduled to arrive at Dover Air Force base on Tuesday. According to an article in the Sarasota (Fla.) Herald-Tribune, funeral arrangements are still incomplete, but Bill’s family plans to have him buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

When it was confirmed that Bill had been killed in the Saturday attack, Kelley said, he was “emotionally spent.”

“Brian Bill is an American hero, and we join his family in mourning his loss,” he said.

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