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Politics : GOPwinger Lies/Distortions/Omissions/Perversions of Truth -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DayTraderKidd who wrote (18229)	8/11/2004 4:17:28 PM
From: Doug R	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 173976

Oh dear...shiftless boat vets connections run all the way to..... . . . . . . the Socialist Republic of Vietnam "Swift Boat Vets" seem to have another pair of significant sponsors with deep and long-standing Republican connections in Missouri. Both are officers of Gannon International, a St. Louis conglomerate that does lots of overseas business in, of all places, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Ties to Gannon can be traced via the Swift Boat Vets Web site. On April 14, the site was registered under the name of Lewis Waterman, Gannon's information technology manager, at 11301 Olive Boulevard in St. Louis, the firm's headquarters address. Although Waterman wouldn't discuss why he had set up the Web site, he didn't deny that his boss, Gannon president and CEO William Franke, had asked him to do so. "The information about my client is confidential," said Waterman. He acknowledged knowing, however, that his boss Franke is a Navy veteran who served in Vietnam on swift boats. Gannon vice president Stephen Hayes, who oversees the company's office in Alexandria, Va., is likewise a swift boat veteran who first met Franke when they served together in the Mekong Delta. ... Franke is well known in Missouri as a longtime Republican Party activist and financier. In 1976, he managed John Danforth's victorious Senate campaign; two years later, he ran unsuccessfully for Congress. He also failed in an attempt to resuscitate the defunct St. Louis Globe-Democrat (which was, despite its name, a staunchly Republican newspaper) in 1986. Before the Globe-Democrat finally went under in 1987, Franke had obtained a commitment from the state industrial development authority -- all of whose members were appointed by then Gov. John Ashcroft -- to raise $9 million in tax-exempt revenue bonds to keep the paper afloat. Last June, Franke gave the maximum $2,000 to the Bush-Cheney campaign, and he has since donated an additional $2,000 to House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's political action committee, Americans for a Republican Majority, and $2,000 more to Keep Our Majority, the PAC operated by House Speaker Dennis Hastert. Hayes left a long career in government to join Franke's company in 1993. His résumé is littered with public relations posts in Republican administrations dating back at least to 1984, when he worked as a transition spokesman for Treasury Secretary Donald Regan. He moved on to similar jobs at the Internal Revenue Service, the Federal Aviation Administration and the Agency for International Development. Following the departure of the first Bush administration, Hayes joined Gannon. He maintains his conservative credentials as a director of the International Center for Religion and Diplomacy, an organization that promotes "faith-based diplomacy" to resolve global conflicts. (Among this outfit's other board members are a former Republican congressman from Ohio, an author of books and articles arguing against evolution, and former Reagan national security advisor Robert McFarlane, forced to resign for his role in the Iran-Contra scandal.) None of Gannon's profitable activities in the communist republic would be possible, of course, without the approval of the Hanoi government, which Franke has described as "strong" and "stable." eriposte.com