Pagegate is Just the Tip of the Iceberg
Wayne Madsen – Wayne Madsen Report October 13/14, 2006
There is renewed attention on a controversial congressional junket Dennis Hastert led to Myanmar (Burma) in 1996. Hastert, then-Texas Rep. Tom DeLay, then-New York Rep. Bill Paxon, and Rep. Deborah Pryce visited a UNOCAL pipeline in Myanmar as guests of the Myanmar government. Myanmar was then governed and continues to be governed by a ruthless military dictatorship. The trip by Hastert and his GOP colleagues was funded by the Asia-Pacific Exchange Foundation, an entity partly funded by UNOCAL. The oil company also contributed to Hastert's political campaign. Hastert met with Burma's most hard-line generals but not with Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. Hastert and his delegation was afforded all the trappings of a state visit by the Burmese junta, a regime whose intelligence service is known to use child prostitutes to entrap foreign diplomats and leaders. Hastert also visited Bangkok in January 2002. Paxon, Hastert's Myanmar traveling mate, resigned suddenly from his House seat on Feb. 25, 1998. He was succeeded by Tom Reynolds, who is now embroiled in the Pagegate scandal.
After WMR was the first to report on the strange story of John Mark Karr, who was arrested on pedophilia charges by Thai authorities, falsely claimed to have killed Jon Benet Ramsey, and was whisked out of Thailand after the intervention of the CIA, Department of Homeland Security, and the U.S. Embassy in Thailand, State Department sources revealed to us that the U.S. embassies in Southeast Asia not only tolerate U.S. diplomats having sex with underage nationals of the host nations but act as "pimp services" for visiting and newly-transferred U.S. officials. One of the embassies involved is the U.S. Embassy in Yangon (Rangoon), Myanmar. WMR received information that Karr was pulled out of Thailand because he had information on the involvement of top U.S. government officials in the child prostitution trade in Thailand and any testimony by Karr in a Thai court could have proved "embarrassing" for the Bush administration.
The situation at the US Embassy in Bangkok was so bad, a newly-arrived Deputy Chief of Mission wondered why barely legal-aged male staffers at one of the official State Department residences would line up at the foot of stairs before he went to bed. He later realized that they were waiting to see which one he would take to bed. One U.S. diplomat regularly traveled with two young boys he procured in Vientiane, Laos and Phnom Penh, Cambodia. When he took the boys on an assignment to Bandar Seri Begawan, he was declared persona non grata by the Brunei government because homosexuality is illegal in the Muslim monarchy. The U.S. embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia is another posting that tolerates its diplomats having sex with underage male prostitutes.
It is clear that Pagegate is just the tip of the iceberg. The scandal has tentacles that reach into the Senate, the Oval Office of the White House, the State Department, and U.S. embassies throughout Southeast Asia. Only a clean sweep of the GOP leadership in Congress will shed light on what could be a pedophilia scandal on the level of that experienced by the Catholic Church.
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Last updated 16/10/2006