Was Strauss-Kahn Framed?

Dominique Strauss-Kahn was a leading candidate to become president of France in 2012 when New York authorities arrested him and charged him with raping a chambermaid at a luxury midtown New York hotel. Strauss-Kahn, then head of the IMF, had checked out of the hotel and boarded an Air France  plane at New York's Kennedy Airport for a return flight to Paris when New York Police pulled him from the plane to book him on the charges. The hotel maid, who is Muslim, is in the U.S. as an asylum seeker. The New York Times exclusively learned that the New York District Attorney's case against Strauss-Kahn, who is Jewish, had fallen apart after his accuser's credibility had been called into question, leading to his release:

The development represented a stunning reversal in a case that reshaped the French political landscape and sparked debate about morals, the treatment of women and the American justice system. Prosecutors said they still believed Mr. Strauss-Kahn had forced the woman into sex, but that inconsistencies in her past and account of the moments following the incident could make it hard for jurors to believe her . . .

The housekeeper admitted to prosecutors that she lied about what happened after the episode on the 28th floor of the hotel. She had initially said that after being attacked, she had waited in a hallway until Mr. Strauss-Kahn left the room; she now admits that after the episode, she cleaned a nearby room, then returned to Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s suite to clean there. Only after that did she report to her supervisor that she had been attacked.

Prosecutors disclosed that the woman had admitted lying in her application for asylum from Guinea; according to the letter, she “fabricated the statement with the assistance of a male who provided her with a cassette recording” that she memorized. She also said that her claim that she had been the victim of a gang rape in Guinea was also a lie.

The woman also acknowledged that she had misrepresented her income to qualify for her housing, and had declared a friend’s child — in addition to her own daughter — as a dependent on tax returns to increase her tax refund.

Mr. Thompson, the woman’s lawyer, gave a lengthy retort outside the courtroom in which he conceded problems with her credibility, but insisted that she was still the victim of an attack, saying that her version of events has never wavered. He said some evidence, like bruising she had sustained, was consistent with a nonconsensual encounter. And he said her decision to clean a room was consistent with someone who was confused and upset in the wake of an attack . . .  

The prosecutors’ letter did not include all of what their investigators had learned about the woman. According to two law enforcement officials familiar with the prosecutors’ inquiry, the woman had a phone conversation with an incarcerated man within a day of her encounter with Mr. Strauss-Kahn in which she discussed the possible benefits of pursuing the charges against him. The conversation was recorded.

That man, the investigators learned, had been arrested on charges of possessing 400 pounds of marijuana. He is among a number of individuals who made multiple cash deposits, totaling around $100,000, into the woman’s bank account over the last two years. The deposits were made in Arizona, Georgia, New York and Pennsylvania.

The investigators also learned that she was paying hundreds of dollars every month in phone charges to five companies. The woman had insisted she had only one phone and said she knew nothing about the deposits except that they were made by a man she described as her fiancé and his friends . . . .

Prior to his arrest, Strauss-Kahn had predicted his enemies might seek to frame him. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin soon after Strauss-Kahn's arrest claimed the prospective French presidential candidate had been the victim of a U.S. conspiracy. “It’s hard for me to evaluate the hidden political motives but I cannot believe that it looks the way it was initially introduced," Putin was quoted as saying. "It doesn’t sit right in my head." A Russian intelligence report prepared for Putin reportedly claimed Strauss-Kahn had become increasingly concerned about the U.S. government's ability to deliver 191.3 tons of gold to the IMF under the terms of a 1978 agreement that were to be sold to fund Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) as an alternative to reserve currencies. The Russian intelligence report claimed Strauss-Kahn had raised concerns with officials of the Obama administration and had recently been tipped off by an informant within the CIA who claimed all of America's gold reserves stored at Fort Knox, Kentucky were missing.

It should be noted that U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, a 2012 GOP presidential candidate, has raised his own concerns about America's gold reserves. He has unsuccessfully pursued congressional efforts to require an audit be conducted to determine the amount of gold reserves being held at Fort Knox. “If there was no question about the gold being there, you think they would be anxious to prove gold is there,” Paul told Kitco News. “Our Federal Reserve admits to nothing, and they should prove all the gold is there. There is a reason to be suspicious and even if you are not suspicious why wouldn’t you have an audit?" Failing in his effort to get an audit of the gold reserves, Paul suggested the U.S. should put them up for sale to help close the nation's huge budget deficit given the record high prices of gold. “Given the high price it is now, and the tremendous debt problem we now have, by all means, sell at the peak.”

There is said to be a delivery of gold to China in 2009 that originated from the gold reserves at Ft. Knox that turned out to be fake. After discovering the gold bars were fake, the Chinese government ordered an investigation and determined the U.S. was responsible. The fake gold bars were reportedly manufacturing by a sophisticated U.S. refiner during the Clinton administration and shipped to Ft. Knox. A top executive of the New York Mercantile Exchange, which would have had records of the fake gold bars in question, faced an investigation by the New York District Attorney's Office in 2004. The executive under investigation, Stuart Smith, took a leave of absence from the exchange after the investigation was launched never to be heard from again.

Interestingly, the New York District Attorney who brought the charges against Strauss-Kahn is Cyrus Vance, Jr., the son of former Carter administration Secretary of State Cyrus Vance. The senior Vance served as U.S. Secretary of State when the original 1978 IMF agreement requiring the delivery of gold was inked. He resigned the Carter administration in protest after President Carter authorized a secret mission into Iran in 1979 to free Americans who were taken hostage at the American Embassy in Tehran after radical Muslims allied with the Ayatollah Khomeini stormed the embassy grounds. Vance, who had spent months attempting to negotiate the release of the 53 hostages, tendered his resignation before learning the mission had failed. The younger Vance came under fire recently when he failed to secure charges against two Muslim terrorists accused of plotting to bomb the largest Manhattan synagogue. He now has egg on his face big time with this badly-botched case against Strauss-Kahn. It is incredible that he would not have checked out the veracity of a person making such salacious allegations against a high-ranking official.

Can you imagine if the Russians had arrested Barack Obama on trumped up charges during his visit to that country with other U.S. Senators prior to his run for president. The Russians did, incidentally, detain then-Sen. Obama and Sen. Richard Lugar for several hours during their visit to the country in 2005 while Russian officials searched their airplane and examined their passports. The reason for their detention has never been explained by the government or the two men.