Mapping The Real Deal with Catherine Austin Fitts
US News & World Report Doth Protest Too Much
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
US NEWS & WORLD REPORT
from Catherine Austin Fitts
Ladies & Gentlemen:
Sam Smith of Progressive Review once said that corruption in Washington was a culture, not a conspiracy. US News & World Report -- once again -- proves Sam right.
Your investigative report, "Keeping Secrets - The Bush Administration is doing the public's business out of the public
eye. Here's how -- and why," co-authored by Ed Pound is a breathtaking example of the zero accountability journalism
practiced by the US corporate media.
Your readers deserve to know your much more meaningful role in protecting the Bush political and business interests from
transparency.
As Assistant Secretary of Housing in the first Bush Administration, I discovered that more than 100% of our losses in
the FHA single family mortgage insurance programs were in the Texas and Colorado federal regions. These tracked the
Resolution Trust Corporation's losses. My efforts to bring place based transparency to what now appear to be significant
patterns of Iran Contra fraud by the Bush family and their business partners were cancelled the day after I was fired by
Secretary Jack Kemp in August 1990.
Having discovered the power of place based disclosure of government taxation, spending and credit, I founded an
investment bank and software developer in Washington, Hamilton Securities. Hamilton proceeded to develop a series of
software tools and databases to provide citizens with access to federal finances through the Internet on an open and
transparent basis. This included a software tool prototype called Community Wizard. These efforts meant that citizens
could --for the first time--- easily access through the Internet the federal budget, credit, contracts award and other
financial information contiguous with the political jurisdictions used to elect political representatives. Such place
based transparency is the very foundation of accountability.
In 1998, former CIA General Counsel, Judge Stanley Sporkin, ordered the digital records of Hamilton Securities seized in
a process which successfully destroyed our business and digital systems, including Community Wizard. This seizure was
the culmination of a smear campaign that got underway in the summer of 1996, lead by Ed Pound and a team of reporters
from US News & World Report and fueled by the credibility they gave to baseless and frivolous allegations.
If Community Wizard and its developers had been protected by an honest media -- instead of being targeted with the help
of a four month onslaught by a well funded team from US News & World Report -- it is unlikely that George W. Bush would be President today.
If you don't like Bush secrecy, you have to look no further than your own mirror for one of the appropriate parties to
hold responsible.
Sincerely Yours,
Catherine Austin Fitts
Solari
Former Assistant Secretary of Housing, Bush I
REFERENCES:
Keeping Secrets - The Bush Administration is doing the public's business out of the public eye
Hamilton Securities -- Legal Documents and History
On the Money Trail (Description of Community Wizard)
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Catherine Austin Fitts is the President of Solari, Inc.( http://www.solari.com), a founding member of UnAnsweredQuestions.org ( http://www.unansweredquestions.org) and member of the Advisory Board of Sanders Research Associates ( http://www.sandersresearch.com). Ms. Fitts is former Assistant Secretary of Housing-Federal Housing Commissioner in Bush I and a former managing
director and member of the board of directors of Dillon Read & Co. Inc.
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Anti©opyright Catherine Austin Fitts – December 2003