Who Killed Chandra Levy?

[barracuda]

Police near arrest in Chandra Levy case

WASHINGTON (AFP) — Washington police were close to an arrest in the slaying of 24-year-old federal intern Chandra Levy nearly eight years after her disappearance, local media reported.

WRC TV news in Washington reported that police in the capital city had submitted evidence to the US attorney's office to obtain an arrest warrant for Ingmar Guandique, who is currently imprisoned in California.

Levy went missing in May 2001, prompting a frenzied search that lasted for months. Her heavily decomposed remains were found in May 2002 by a jogger in the city's Rock Creek Park.

Guandique is in prison on charges of having assaulted two women in that same park, WRC TV said.

"The chief police called us out of Washington. They gave us a heads up that this was going to happen soon ... She said it would be really soon, so tonight or tomorrow," Robert Levy, Chandra's father, told KXTV of Sacramento, California late Friday.

"There was a warrant out for arrest, that's all I know," said his wife, Susan. The family is from Modesto, California.

At the time of her disappearance, Levy had just completed an internship at the US Bureau of Prisons. An autopsy by the medical examiner found that she had died from strangulation but no one was ever charged in the homicide case.

Gary Condit, a married Democratic lawmaker from California, denied that he was involved in Levy's death or had any knowledge of her disappearance.

But he told police at the time that he and Chandra were having an affair, an admission that was seen as the primary cause for his re-election defeat in 2002.

[sunny]

Arrest Near In Chandra Levy Case?
Reports: D.C. Police Eyeing Inmate In 2001 Murder Of Washington Intern
Comments 24
WASHINGTON, Feb. 21, 2009

(CBS) Authorities in Washington, D.C. may be close to an arrest in the murder of former government intern Chandra Levy, a case that made headlines, and brought down a congressman eight years ago.

There are reports that D.C. police have submitted evidence to the U.S. Attorney's Office in an effort to get an arrest warrant for a man identified as Ingmar Guandique.

He's behind bars, convicted of assaulting two women jogging in Washington's Rock Creek Park.

An inmate serving time with Guandique reportedly told investigators that Guandique told him he killed Levy, but Guandique is said to have told police he saw Levy in the park, but didn't harm her.

Levy was an intern at the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

She was 24 when she disappeared from her D.C. apartment. Her remains were found more than a year later in Rock Creek Park by a man walking his dog.

D.C. cops were sharply criticized at the time for saying they'd searched that park, and found nothing.

Levy's disappearance has remained a mystery ever since, but it also revealed an affair with then-California Rep. Gary Condit. That cost him his seat.

For many weeks, Condit appeared to be the prime suspect in her disappearance. For months, he said little about his relationship with Levy, except for repeating over and over that he had nothing to do with her death or disappearance.

On The Early Show Saturday Edition, CBS News legal analyst Lisa Bloom speculated a jailhouse snitch, like the one cited in news accounts, could have been the source of the new evidence police are apparently using to target Guandique.

"My guess would be two things," Bloom said. "One, new statements from the suspect behind bars, possibly linking him to Chandra Levy. The other would be developments in forensic science, which has grown by leaps and bounds in the last eight years. Maybe they have something new on him ... something linking him to the remains of Chandra Levy. When her remains were found in Rock Creek Park, they were highly decomposed. ... Nevertheless, hair, bone samples, dental records, something linking him to her remains. Otherwise, it's hard to understand what could be new -- statements perhaps made behind bars to other inmates, a jailhouse confession, something of that nature."

CBS

[MinM]

Will TV News Ever Apologize for Condit Hoax?

For four months beginning in May 2001, major U.S. media outlets, including all three cable news channels, took the American public for a ride -- perpetrating a hoax that a married congressman was somehow involved in the disappearance of a female intern.

As I witnessed the farce from inside cable news, I could see it was all about ratings and had nothing to do with journalism.

This week -- with these same outlets reporting a "break" in the 8-year-old murder case -- would be a good time for TV news executives to look back and give the public a big, fat apology.

TV news served up its spectacular four-month sideshow at a crucial historical moment. During this period in 2001...

 Roughly 20 Al Qaeda terrorists -- including two on the CIA terrorist watch list -- were deploying across our country, while Zacarias Moussaoui was arrested in Minnesota due to weird behavior at a flight school, and George Bush received a presidential briefing memo titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S."

 John Ashcroft's Justice Department was devoting vital resources to surveil prostitutes in New Orleans and medical marijuana clinics in California, while rebuffing (on Sept. 10, 2001) the FBI's request for $58 million in additional counter-terrorism funds for agents, analysts and interpreters.

 Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was demanding billions in "Star Wars" funding to defend America from ballistic missiles, while threatening a presidential veto (on Sept. 9, 2001) over a Senate proposal to shift $600 million from space-based weapons systems to counter-terrorism.

As they were failing to notice or report deadly serious news during these months, an army of TV "news" personnel engaged in a mindless, feverish, daily pursuit of a previously obscure congressman, Gary Condit.

This weekend it became even clearer (it was clear to rational folks back in 2001) that Condit had nothing to do with the disappearance of D.C. intern Chandra Levy.

Major media now report that authorities are about to arrest Ingmar Guandique in the Levy murder -- a man who pled guilty in 2001 to two separate assaults on young women in the same part of D.C.

There'd never been any evidence against Condit (a conservative Democrat from central California). He was never a police suspect. But he had a sexual relationship with Levy before she disappeared, and that's all television news needed to construct its biggest news-opera since Clinton/Lewinsky.

TV news executives would like us to forget this whole bizarre episode. But we shouldn't forget. I can't, since I experienced that loony summer inside Fox News Channel, where I was an on-air contributor.

From May to Sept. 11, cable news channels covered no story more than Condit/Levy. Not the economic slowdown, not California's energy crisis, not Ashcroft's or Rumsfeld's misguided priorities, and certainly not something or someone named Al Qaeda. Al who?

For months until the morning the Twin Towers were hit, it was Condit -- not bin Laden -- who was the most despised man in America. Especially on cable news, where Condit was linked week after week to murder, with no end to speculation about how he'd caused the tragedy. Perhaps Levy died during rough sex with the congressman. Or her death was connected to Condit's ex-con brother. Or Condit's buddies in a motorcycle gang. Or because Levy was pregnant with Condit's baby.

"TV's barking heads are drooling," wrote media critic Todd Gitlin.

The story seemed propelled far more by salacious interest in Condit's sex life than concern for a missing woman. A cable viewer could hear third-hand claims about his alleged S&M practices, homosexual fantasies, leather fetishism.

A few newspapers also fed the frenzy. The Washington Post published a page 1 exclusive about an alleged affair Condit had years earlier with a teenage girl. The story was based on the girl's father, a minister, who later admitted he concocted the tale.

Amid the conjecture that filled hundreds of hours of cable news, Paula Zahn on Fox News interviewed a "world-renowned psychic" from California, who asserted that Chandra Levy's body was in a Washington. D.C. park by "some trees down in a marshy area."

PSYCHIC: This girl -- I am sorry to tell you this, but this girl is not alive.

ZAHN: How do you know that, Sylvia? Has this been something that you've been spending time thinking about and analyzing?

PSYCHIC: No, no, no. Paula, you know, you can either be one place or the other. If you're not here, you've got to be there.

ZAHN: And why are you so convinced she's there?

PSYCHIC: Because I'm a psychic. I know where she -- I know she's there. She was gone very quickly after she was first missing.

Ironically, the psychic's speculation turned out to be more accurate than much of what passed for informed analysis on the story. (A year after Levy's disappearance, her skeletal remains were found in D.C.'s Rock Creek Park where she'd been jogging.)

This embarrassing chapter in TV news history also played a role in the cable news ratings war, as Broadcasting & Cable reported in Aug. 2001: "Helped by the Chandra Levy mystery, Fox News Channel is continuing its ratings tear, besting CNN for the sixth consecutive month. Fox News' prime-time ratings have climbed one-tenth of a point each month since the former intern vanished in May."...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-cohe ... 68961.html

[MinM]

State of Play (2009)

Handsome, unflappable U.S. Congressman Stephen Collins (Ben Affleck) is the future of his political party: an honorable appointee who serves as the chairman of a committee overseeing defense spending. All eyes are upon the rising star to be his party's contender for the upcoming presidential race. Until his research assistant/mistress is brutally murdered and buried secrets come tumbling out...
http://www.themovieinsider.com/m2212/state-of-play/

YouTube - State of Play-Trailer 2-(HD 720) -2009

[Hugh Manatee Wins]

I'm pretty sure WHY Chandra Levy was killed:
> to put CIA-media focus on Congressman Gary Condit instead of Jim Condit Jr., an election fraud whistleblower when W was an imminent Oil War President with approval numbers already in the toilet.

> Plus, this scandal extended the anti-Dem Monicagate vibe bolstering pro-war Republicans.

Yes, a keyword hijacking murder to control news cycle.
One of several I've found so far.

And the reason the CIA-Washington Post in July 2008 began a 12-part series on the seven year-old Chandra Levy-body-in-Rock Creek Park story...was because a new indie newspaper called The Rock Creek Free Press had started up in the D.C. area and online telling the truth about 9/11, CIA media, etc.

KH = s.o.p.

Highly recommended-
http://rockcreekfreepress.com/

[brekin]

Hugh Manatee Wins wrote:

I'm pretty sure WHY Chandra Levy was killed:
> to put CIA-media focus on Congressman Gary Condit instead of Jim Condit Jr., an election fraud whistleblower when W was an imminent Oil War President with approval numbers already in the toilet.

> Plus, this scandal extended the anti-Dem Monicagate vibe bolstering pro-war Republicans.

Yes, a keyword hijacking murder to control news cycle.
One of several I've found so far.

If the CIA controls the media, why would they have to murder someone to change the media focus? Couldn't they just make the decision to put more stress on Gary Condit then Jim Condit Jr. ?