Philadelphia Regional Port Authority and the Heart of East Coast Pizzagate - Trafficking, PA State Corruption, Jerry Sandusky, and Ed Savitz. (pizzagate)

submitted ago by afterbernerthrowaway

First, from the US Office of National Drug Control Policy, a 2001 posting detailing the 1995 designation of the Port of Philadelphia/Camden as a "High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area": https://www.ncjrs.gov/ondcppubs/publications/enforce/hidta2001/phil-fs.html - [archived here]

Philadelphia remains a center of activity for the importation, wholesale distribution, and street level sales of illegal drugs on the East Coast. Camden, New Jersey, separated from Philadelphia by the Delaware River, is a focal point for drug trafficking from Philadelphia and the New York area. The location of Philadelphia and Camden on the eastern seaboard, particularly their proximity to New York, places the city on one of the busiest illegal drug transit routes. Major interstate rail and highway systems; a major international airport, one of the fastest growing in the world; and key shipping terminals on the 100 miles of waterfront along the Delaware River facilitate drug trafficking into and through the region. The Port of Philadelphia/Camden is a major international seaport and the second largest seaport in the nation. Multi-kilogram shipments of cocaine are trafficked through this port. Major New York drug trafficking organizations use Philadelphia as a transshipment point for their drugs, drug-proceeds, and illegal guns. New York gangs have expanded their territory to the outskirts of the area.

It stands to reason that if the second largest seaport in the nation is a major hub for weapon and drug trafficking [as identified by the FBI, DEA, ATF, INS, IRS, US Customs, and others], it's plausible that human trafficking is also happening here. From 1991 to 2000, Ed Rendell was the mayor of Philadelphia. From 1999 to 2001, Rendell was the Chairman of the Democratic National Committee. In 2003 he was elected as Governor of Pennsylvania, a position he held until 2011. In the presidential primaries of both 2008 and 2016, Rendell was a hugely loyal and vocal surrogate for Hillary Clinton's campaign.

Second, news from May 2016 that rocked the "good ol' boys" entrenched establishment political/business network across Pennsylvania--Ed Rendell's former Chief of Staff (during both his mayoral and his gubernatorial terms) John Estey admits to having gotten caught in a 2011 pay-to-play corruption sting accepting personal and political bribes from a (sham) corporation set up by the FBI: http://www.philly.com/philly/news/politics/20160511_Estey_to_plead_guilty_in_pay-to-play_sting.html - [archived here]

The Inquirer has reported that Estey, 53, has been secretly cooperating with federal authorities, possibly for years, and wore a digital recording device to surreptitiously record his conversations for the agents as he traveled in the state's political, legal, and business circles. Sources familiar with the matter have suggested that the investigation, which federal authorities have said involves "lobbying in the Pennsylvania General Assembly," has the potential to lead to more arrests.

[. . .] According to the court filings, the FBI set up its phony business in 2009 to "investigate allegations of public corruption in Pennsylvania."

[. . .] Estey also has served as chairman of the Delaware River Port Authority, the Philadelphia Regional Port Authority, and the Independence Visitor Center. Until recently, Estey was a top official at the Hershey Trust Co., which fired him after federal authorities announced the charges.

So here we have, just earlier this year, former Governor Ed Rendell's right-hand man for DECADES being convicted of pay-to-play corruption in an FBI sting that happened five years ago, right at the twilight of Rendell's time as governor. He's been wearing a wire since and talking to tons of PA elite, and the FBI has the dirt that he's gathered. Further, this now-demonstrably corrupt political operator was formerly the Chairman of both the Philadelphia Regional Port Authority and the Delaware River Port Authority.

Third, in a widely publicized 2011 case unveiling the decades-long cover-up of child sex abuse by Penn State official Jerry Sandusky, the public learned that Sandusky had groomed and sexually abused dozens of at-risk boys from his "The Second Mile" nonprofit under the willful cover-up by Penn State head coach Joe Paterno. [[As an aside, I was just reading the Sandusky and Second Mile Wikipedia articles. Both articles source a since-deleted ABC News article that details George H.W. Bush having praised the charity in a 1990 letter as a "shining example" of charity work and one of that president's much-promoted "Thousand points of light" encouragements to volunteer community organizations. I finally found a 2011 archive of the sourced ABC News article [archived here]]]

Though the 2011 charges against Sandusky had followed two years of Grand Jury investigation into the allegations, this was not the first time Sandusky's activities had been investigated in Centre County, PA. In 2005, then-Centre County District Attorney Ray Gricar--a well-respected man months away from retirement who had a strong history of doggedly prosecuting violent crimes using circumstantial evidence archived here--vanished. From page 2 of the deleted ABC News article:

First, from the US Office of National Drug Control Policy, a 2001 posting detailing the 1995 designation of the Port of Philadelphia/Camden as a "High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area": https://www.ncjrs.gov/ondcppubs/publications/enforce/hidta2001/phil-fs.html - [archived here]

Philadelphia remains a center of activity for the importation, wholesale distribution, and street level sales of illegal drugs on the East Coast. Camden, New Jersey, separated from Philadelphia by the Delaware River, is a focal point for drug trafficking from Philadelphia and the New York area. The location of Philadelphia and Camden on the eastern seaboard, particularly their proximity to New York, places the city on one of the busiest illegal drug transit routes. Major interstate rail and highway systems; a major international airport, one of the fastest growing in the world; and key shipping terminals on the 100 miles of waterfront along the Delaware River facilitate drug trafficking into and through the region. The Port of Philadelphia/Camden is a major international seaport and the second largest seaport in the nation. Multi-kilogram shipments of cocaine are trafficked through this port. Major New York drug trafficking organizations use Philadelphia as a transshipment point for their drugs, drug-proceeds, and illegal guns. New York gangs have expanded their territory to the outskirts of the area.

It stands to reason that if the second largest seaport in the nation is a major hub for weapon and drug trafficking [as identified by the FBI, DEA, ATF, INS, IRS, US Customs, and others], it's plausible that human trafficking is also happening here. From 1991 to 2000, Ed Rendell was the mayor of Philadelphia. From 1999 to 2001, Rendell was the Chairman of the Democratic National Committee. In 2003 he was elected as Governor of Pennsylvania, a position he held until 2011. In the presidential primaries of both 2008 and 2016, Rendell was a hugely loyal and vocal surrogate for Hillary Clinton's campaign.

Second, news from May 2016 that rocked the "good ol' boys" entrenched establishment political/business network across Pennsylvania--Ed Rendell's former Chief of Staff (during both his mayoral and his gubernatorial terms) John Estey admits to having gotten caught in a 2011 pay-to-play corruption sting accepting personal and political bribes from a (sham) corporation set up by the FBI: http://www.philly.com/philly/news/politics/20160511_Estey_to_plead_guilty_in_pay-to-play_sting.html - [archived here]

The Inquirer has reported that Estey, 53, has been secretly cooperating with federal authorities, possibly for years, and wore a digital recording device to surreptitiously record his conversations for the agents as he traveled in the state's political, legal, and business circles. Sources familiar with the matter have suggested that the investigation, which federal authorities have said involves "lobbying in the Pennsylvania General Assembly," has the potential to lead to more arrests.

[. . .] According to the court filings, the FBI set up its phony business in 2009 to "investigate allegations of public corruption in Pennsylvania."

[. . .] Estey also has served as chairman of the Delaware River Port Authority, the Philadelphia Regional Port Authority, and the Independence Visitor Center. Until recently, Estey was a top official at the Hershey Trust Co., which fired him after federal authorities announced the charges.

So here we have, just earlier this year, former Governor Ed Rendell's right-hand man for DECADES being convicted of pay-to-play corruption in an FBI sting that happened five years ago, right at the twilight of Rendell's time as governor. He's been wearing a wire since and talking to tons of PA elite, and the FBI has the dirt that he's gathered. Further, this now-demonstrably corrupt political operator was formerly the Chairman of both the Philadelphia Regional Port Authority and the Delaware River Port Authority.

[Continued in comments]

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

view the rest of the comments →

afterbernerthrowaway ago

Fifth, in 2010 in the midst of the Haitian earthquake, Ed Rendell worked overtime with top Obama administration officials to pull off a hasty and illegal airlift of 54 Haitian children.

From a little over a month after the airlift, in a February 2010 New York Times article - [archived here]:

But for 12 of the children, last month’s airlift transported them from one uncertain predicament to another. As it turns out, those children — between 11 months and 10 years old — were not in the process of being adopted, might not all even be orphans and are living in a juvenile care center here while the authorities determine whether they have relatives in Haiti who are able to take care of them.

The details of the children’s departure — and what that could mean for relations between the United States and the Haitian government, which later detained 10 Americans for trying to take children out of the country without authorization — remain unclear.

Ambassador Raymond Joseph, Haiti’s envoy to the United States, said he refused to approve Governor Rendell’s request to remove children from the country who were not already in the adoption pipeline. But an aide to Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive said the Haitian government accepted assurances from Mr. Rendell and American officials that the children would be well cared for in the United States. The adviser, Alice Blanchet, said of the governor, “I have no reason to second guess his intentions.”

This whole situation sounds awfully familiar to those of us familiar with the Laura Silsby case. I believe the 10 arrested Americans referenced in this article include Silsby.

Senior Obama administration officials acknowledged in interviews that the lines of authority were fuzzy in Haiti on the day of the rescue mission, Jan. 18. And they said that American officials concerned about the well-being of the children had allowed Mr. Rendell to remove them from Haiti even though they had not received clear authorization to travel by the Haitian government and were not in the process of being adopted by American families, as required by a United States humanitarian parole policy announced the day Mr. Rendell landed in Haiti.

“This wasn’t supposed to happen this way,” said one senior State Department official, who like others asked not to be identified in order to speak candidly about the episode. “But it’s not as if it was a normal day in Haiti, either.”

When asked what he had done to persuade the administration to grant an exception for the 12 children, Mr. Rendell said in a phone interview, “I don’t know how it happened, but I didn’t ask a lot of questions, and if you had seen the faces of those children as we loaded them onto the airplane, you wouldn’t have asked a lot of questions, either.”

[. . .]

[Rendell] and Representative Jason Altmire, another Democrat who was also participating in the mission, began contacting everyone they thought could help back in Washington, including Rahm Emanuel, President Obama’s chief of staff, Huma M. Abedin, a senior aide to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, and Pennsylvania’s two senators, Arlen Specter and Bob Casey, both Democrats.

Ang68 ago

An FOIA should be requested on Rendell. A report was actually filed against him by one of the sex ring victims, but never went anywhere.