Monday, June 2, 2008

A circus spy and CIA honcho Wendy McCaw can love...

"THE INVESTIGATOR" Robert Eringer, flacks for the Santa Barbara News-Press in a shameful sleeper: Secession: Coming soon to a neighborhood near you? 5/31/08 here
Without a doubt Jeff Stein's tale on "The Greatest Vendetta on Earth" shines more light in the dark life of another McCaw character. No, he's not on the good guys side, but he does keep his clothes on. He lived high on the hog with money made on the backs of circus animals and children.
Does Wendy care for circus animals?
The goofy Laura Schlessinger claimed to be so principled she refused to work for the same corporation as Howard Stern. No principles for Wendy. She booted 11 employees and gave "the investigator" office space away from his estate... knowing full well he spent 8 years on Ringling Brothers dime to prevent the truth about what it's like for animals and children. Does Schlessinger care for circus children? If Schlessinger had principles she'd at least do as she did with Dr.Seabaugh or Dear Abby.

"The Greatest Vendetta on Earth" is an interesting read:
Why would the head of Ringling Bros.-Barnum & Bailey hire a former top CIA honcho to torment a hapless freelance writer
for eight years?

Excerpts:

"...Of all the strange figures that pop up in this murky tale, Robert Eringer may be the most mystifying. Eringer grew up in Beverly Hills, the son of a noted illustrator for Walt Disney who has now retired to Monaco. Despite attending four colleges without getting a degree, he became a fairly prolific author. In addition to a few magazine articles, mostly on espionage-related subjects, he published several nonfiction books, including "The Global Manipulators" (Pentacle, Bristol, England, 1980), an investigation of the so-called Bilderberg Group, a publicity-shy confederacy of top Western industrialists and officials; "Strike for Freedom: Lech Walesa and Polish Solidarity" (Dodd, Mead, 1982); and "The Conspiracy Peddlers" (1981), which one reviewer called an investigation of "researchers beavering away on ... activities of the super-rich and the intelligence community." That, of course, fit Jan Pottker to a T.

...Eringer also wrote a handful of spy novels, which were published by an obscure house called National Press Books and other even more obscure publishers in South Carolina linked to NPB. Eringer's fiction drew no attention except from a few equally obscure reviewers and publicists, at least one of whom was paid to spam the Internet with disingenuous praise for Eringer's books.

...Eringer's ties to the CIA don't end there. Former CIA director Richard Helms just happened to be Eringer's backyard neighbor in Foxhall, arguably the poshest part of Washington, until Eringer moved to California last June [2001?].

...Salon was unable to contact Eringer using the phone number in California that he left with the court. A reverse-directory check on the number in Santa Barbara, moreover, doesn't match the address he gave to the court.

..."When talk turned to the circus," they [Eringer and George] reported to Feld, "Pottker had very little to say. Why? She has no time to even think about Ringling Bros. Our projects have effectively diverted her from new investigations into Ringling Bros and from marketing her unpublished story on circus children."

...It would seem that Smith and Feld believed that they could control the media through friends in high places. Certainly the inexplicable press silence that followed Pottker's lawsuit seemed to give credence to their faith. After two years, despite court files swelling with riveting tales of corporate spying and dirty tricks; despite the curious involvement of a brand-name CIA agent with a member of the Forbes 400, who happens to own the world's largest, best known live-entertainment company; despite two suits filed by major animal rights groups; and despite the elaborate, nearly decade-long harassment of a writer swirling under the nose of the national media in Washington, not a word of her suit appeared in print or on the air.

...The 15 volumes in the basement of Superior Court are also littered with photocopies of checks that George and Eringer issued and received, not only in connection with Pottker, but in what looks like a wide spectrum of activities. All the while, they were dining out on other people's money at the Chevy Chase Club and other exclusive haunts.

"Project Preempt.".... By their own testimony, however, they admit that they ran an eight-year-long operation to divert her into different projects.
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The vulgarity of spy and counter-spy...
More Wendy buffoons
"The Suspicious Nature of Rob Lowe’s Extortion Scandal"

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