January 27th, 2012 | Trento's Take | Joseph Trento |
Newt Gingrich
(Photo credit: Gage Skidmore) On December 13 we posted a 6,400 word story about a FBI probe into Newt Gingrich when he was Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and his second wife, Marianne. It was a serious effort to report on a serious matter. My naïve hope was that my colleagues would follow our course and advance this story by expending more resources and pursuing the leads.
We had success getting a number of key people to go on the record and lay out the story. We got key FBI documents from a second Bureau source so we knew what we had was real. We tried to put a complex story into a coherent and verifiable narrative. We contacted three major news organizations about the story before it ran on our website. We offered each of the organizations contact information for our sources, the FBI documents and other information including taped interviews. All three news organizations said they would do the story – yet none of them did.
Continue reading The Gingrich FBI Investigation
 ALBANY, N.Y. — Ignoring taunts from anti-hydrofracking protestors marching outside, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo delivered a nearly hour-long State of the State address to lawmakers Jan. 4 without mentioning the hot-button gas drilling technique.
In his speech, the governor skipped over a section of his prepared remarks that had promised to deliver in 2012 both the state’s final rules for new gas well permits and recommendations from his own gas drilling advisory panel.
Asked about the omission, Cuomo spokesman Matt Wing said of his boss’ hydrofracking policy: “We are still waiting for the facts … We base everything on facts.”
Continue reading N.Y. Gov. Andrew Cuomo Sidesteps Natural Gas Hydrofracking Controversies
King Harbor Marina in Redondo Beach, California.
Tucked behind the northeast corner of King Harbor Marina in Redondo Beach, California, there is a $10 million experiment taking place over how best to turn the salt water of the Pacific Ocean into drinkable tap water.
The demo plant here represents the second of two pilot projects – the other one previously in El Segundo began 10 years ago and has since been concluded. The two pilots have cost at least $18 million. A review of board meeting documents by the nonprofit Desal Response Group reveal more than $23 million in construction and consulting services since 2006 related to the development of these two pilot projects.
Out of more than a dozen water agencies in California thinking about building a full-scale ocean desalination facility, none have spent as much time and money on demonstration projects than the West Basin Municipal Water District in Southern California. Continue reading Parched for Water — Controversial Southern California Desalination Pilot Projects
Newt Gingrich and second wife Marianne Gingrich.
On October 5, Sarkis Soghanalian, once the world’s largest private arms dealer, died at 82. He had sold weapons to scores of dictators including Saddam Hussein, and he took many secrets with him to his grave. But one secret he did not take involves Newt Gingrich when he was Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. DCBureau has learned that Gingrich was at the center of a U.S. Justice Department criminal investigation in the late 1990s for a scheme to shake down the arms dealer for a $10 million bribe in exchange for Gingrich using his influence as Speaker to get the Iraq arms embargo lifted so Soghanalian could collect $54 million from Saddam Hussein’s regime for weapons he had delivered during the Iran-Iraq War.
Soghanalian was an FBI informant and was responsible for launching one of the most sensitive and secret investigations in FBI history involving the former Speaker and his second wife. According to Marianne Gingrich, it took the direct intervention of then FBI Director Louis J. Freeh to “get the investigation called off.” Continue reading Newt Gingrich, Marianne and the Arms Dealer:
A Buried FBI Investigation
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