Olbermann: 'McCain's top guy on the economy made it easier for bin Laden' David Edwards and Muriel Kane

Published: Tuesday June 3, 2008



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Print This Email This Last week, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann revealed that the co-chair of Senator John McCain's presidential campaign, the fiercely pro-deregulation Phil Gramm, had been lobbying for a Swiss bank this spring to head off relief for victims of the mortgage crisis at the same time that he was acting as a leading McCain economic advisor. Now Olbermann reports that McCain's Phil Gramm scandal has widened, explaining that the former Republican senator from Texas "made it easier for bin Laden. ... In the Senate he blocked legislation that would have enabled the Bush administration to force foreign banks into cooperating on anti-terror measures before and after 9/11." "Gramm's bank is under investigation for alleged use of overseas tax havens to hide assets of the wealthy from US authorities," Olbermann began, citing a current story in Newsweek. Olbermann went on to point out that "on September 20, 2001, the New York Times reported that a single senator had blocked legislation that would have helped US investigators track Osama bin Laden's financial network before 9/11. It was Phil Gramm -- who still defended these tax havens after 9/11, whose bank was still lobbying Congress on behalf of tax havens as recently as last year." This fresh controversy about Gramm arose as McCain was blasting Obama for his promise to talk with Iranian leaders and the Obama campaign was responding that McCain "continues to cling to a foreign policy that's failed to make the U.S. or Israel safer." "How does McCain run on being tough on Israel's enemies?" Olbermann asked Chris Hayes of The Nation. "What this reveals is really a profound contradiction at the heart of the Republican coalition," Hayes replied. "It's home to the most sort of chest-beating, self-righteous moralists about foreign policy. ... At the same time, it's a party whose agenda is run by global conglomerates that pursue dollar and profit with no regard for any kind of sense of morality. ... It blows apart this entire moralistic rationale." Hayes added that McCain's latest proposal for putting pressure on Iran is an "international campaign towards divestment." However, when "Senator Obama proposed divestment legislation in the Senate and ... it was blocked by a Republican senator because it would have required the government to report on what businesses have dealing with Iran ... [McCain] was unwilling to lift a single finger to make it happen." A full transcript of the segment is available here. This video is from MSNBC's Countdown, broadcast June 2, 2008.